Using gsub to replace last occurence of string in R - r

I have the following character vector than I need to modify with gsub.
strings <- c("x", "pm2.5.median", "rmin.10000m", "rmin.2500m", "rmax.5000m")
Desired output of filtered strings:
"x", "pm2.5.median", "rmin", "rmin", "rmax"
My current attempt works for everything except the pm2.5.median string which has dots that need to be preserved. I'm really just trying to remove the buffer size that is appended to the end of each variable, e.g. 1000m, 2500m, 5000m, 7500m, and 10000m.
gsub("\\..*m$", "", strings)
"x", "pm2", "rmin", "rmin", "rmax"

Match a dot, any number of digits, m and the end of string and replace that with the empty string. Note that we prefer sub to gsub here because we are only interested in one replacement per string.
sub("\\.\\d+m$", "", strings)
## [1] "x" "pm2.5.median" "rmin" "rmin" "rmax"

The .* pattern matches any 0 or more chars, as many as possible. The \..*m$ pattern matches the first (leftmost) . in the string and then grab all the text after it if it ends with m.
You need
> sub("\\.[^.]*m$", "", strings)
[1] "x" "pm2.5.median" "rmin" "rmin" "rmax"
Here, \.[^.]*m$ matches ., then 0 or more chars other than a dot and then m at the end of the string.
See the regex demo.
Details
\. - a dot (must be escaped since it is a special regex char otherwise)
[^.]* - a negated character class matching any char but . 0 or more times
m - an m char
$ - end of string.

Related

Inverting a regex in R

I have this string:
[1] "19980213" "19980214" "19980215" "19980216" "19980217" "iffi" "geometry"
[8] "date_consid"
and I want to match all the elements that are not dates and not "date_consid". I tried
res = grep("(?!\\d{8})|(?!date_consid)", vec, value=T)
But I just cant make it work...
You can use
vec <- c("19980213", "19980214", "19980215", "19980216","19980217", "iffi","geometry", "date_consid")
grep("^(\\d{8}|date_consid)$", vec, value=TRUE, invert=TRUE)
## => [1] "iffi" "geometry"
See the R demo
The ^(\d{8}|date_consid)$ regex matches a string that only consists of any eight digits or that is equal to date_consid.
The value=TRUE makes grep return values rather than indices and invert=TRUE inverses the regex match result (returns those that do not match).
The pattern that you tried gives all the matches because the lookaheads are unanchored.
Using separate statements with or | will still match all strings.
You can change to logic to asserting from the start of the string, what is directly to the right is not either 8 digits or date_consid in a single check.
Using a positive lookahead, you have to add perl=T and add an anchor ^ to assert the start of the string and add an anchor $ to assert the end of the string after the lookahead.
^(?!\\d{8}$|date_consid$)
^ Start of string
(?! Negative lookahead
\\d{8}$ Match 8 digits until end of string
| Or
date_consid$Match date_consid until end of string
) Close lookahead
For example
vec <- c("19980213", "19980214", "19980215", "19980216","19980217", "iffi","geometry", "date_consid")
grep("^(?!\\d{8}$|date_consid$)", vec, value=T, perl=T)
Output
[1] "iffi" "geometry"

sub function in r does not replace the first match

I am trying to manipulate a character vector and want to delete all characters before the first occurrence of a specific string using sub function in r, since the function performs replacement of the first match, but in my code sub replaces the last but not the first match?
Here below is an example
Vec <- c("ID1.P.001", "ID2.P.002") # character vector
# I want to get rid of all characters before the first dot (including the dot)
# So i want to get this vector
c("P.001", "P.002")
#[1] "P.001" "P.002"
# my code
sub('.*\\.', "", Vec )
#[1] "001" "002"
# sub replace the last not the first match !!
How can i use sub to get rid of characters before the first match (including the pattern)?
You can make the * quantifier lazy (opposed to the default greedy matching) by adding a ? after it. I.e.:
sub('.*?\\.', "", Vec)
[1] "P.001" "P.002"
We can specify the start (^) of the string, match the characters that are not a . ([^.]+ - one or more characters that are not a dot) followed by a dot (\\. - metacharacter - so escaping, within the [], it would be evaluated as . though) and in replacement, specify as blank ("")
sub("^[^.]+\\.", "", Vec)
#[1] "P.001" "P.002"

Characters before/after a symbol

I have the following string in R: "xxx, yyy. zzz"
I want to get the yyy part only, which are in between "," and "."
I don't want to use regex.
I searched half a day, found many string functions in R but none which deal with "cut before/after a character" function.
Is there such?
We can use gsub to match zero or more characters that are not a , ([^,]*) from the start (^) of the string followed by a , followed by zero or more spaces (\\s*) or (!) a dot (\\. - it is a metacharacter meaning any character so it is escaped) followed by other characters (.*) until the end of the string ($) and replace it with blank ("")
gsub("^[^,]*,\\s*|\\..*$", "", str1)
#[1] "yyy"
If we don't need regex then strsplit the string by , followed by zero or more spaces or with a . and select the second entry after converting the list output to vector ([[1]])
strsplit(str1, ",\\s*|\\.")[[1]][2]
#[1] "yyy"
data
str1 <- "xxx, yyy. zzz"
It could be that this suffices:
unlist(strsplit("xxx, yyy. zzz","[,.]"))[2] # get yyy with space, or:
gsub(" ","",unlist(strsplit("xxx, yyy. zzz","[,.]")))[2] # remove space

How to substring a char vector using patterns in R?

I have this kind of char vector:
"MODIS.evi.2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif"
The number in the middle of the vector is gonna change. And the evi word will change to ndvi some times.
I want to use substr (or other function, maybe) to sub-string the vector after the second point: ., ie, just take the 2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif, even when the string is MODIS.evi.2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif or MODIS.ndvi.2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif.
We can use sub to match two instance of one or more characters that are not a . followed by a . from the start (^) of the string and replace it with blank ("")
sub("^([^.]+\\.){2}", "", str1)
#[1] "2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif" "2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif"
If the pattern to keep always start with numbers, then the above can be simplified to match only one or more non-numeric characters and replace it with blank from the start (^) of the string
sub("^\\D+", "", str1)
#[1] "2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif" "2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif"
data
str1 <- c("MODIS.evi.2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif", "MODIS.ndvi.2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif")
This deletes all leading non-digit characters in s :
sub("^\\D*", "", s)
If s is as in the Note at the end then the result of running the above is:
[1] "2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif" "2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif"
Note:
s <- c("MODIS.evi.2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif", "MODIS.ndvi.2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif")
l = c("MODIS.evi.2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif","MODIS.ndvi.2013116.yL2.BOKU.tif")
sapply(l, function(x) strsplit(x, "vi.", fixed = T)[[1]][2])

In R: grab all alnum characters before the first punctuation

I have a vector s of strings (or NAs), and would like to get a vector of same length of everything before first occurrence of punctionation (.).
s <- c("ABC1.2", "22A.2", NA)
I would like a result like:
[1] "ABC1" "22A" NA
You can remove all symbols (incl. a newline) from the first dot with the following Perl-like regex:
s <- c("ABC1.2", "22A.2", NA)
gsub("[.][\\s\\S]*$", "", s, perl=T)
## => [1] "ABC1" "22A" NA
See IDEONE demo
The regex matches
[.] - a literal dot
[\\s\\S]* - any symbols incl. a newline
$ - end of string.
All matched strings are removed from the input with "". As the regex engine analyzes the string from left to right, the first dot is matched with \\., and the greedy * quantifier with [\\s\\S] will match all up to the end of string.
If there are no newlines, a simpler regex will do: [.].*$:
gsub("[.].*$", "", s)
See another demo

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