Given some data
hello <- c('13.txt','12.txt','14.txt')
I want to just take the numbers and convert to numeric, i.e. remove the .txt
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4 Answers
7
You want file_path_sans_ext from the tools package
library(tools)
hello <- c('13.txt','12.txt','14.txt')
file_path_sans_ext(hello)
## [1] "13" "12" "14"
mnel
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Thanks. I can't install that package on my current setup for some reason, is there another way using basic R syntax? – luke123 Mar 20 '13 at 02:05
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@luke123 -- `tools` is part of the standard R distribution. You shouldn't have to install it, just call library – mnel Mar 20 '13 at 02:06
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@mnel recently discovered this one myself and have loved it just for these situations. +1 – Tyler Rinker Mar 20 '13 at 02:49
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reputation aside, I'm totally saddened that a solution that requires loading a special package (a dependency) gets more upvotes than the pure base-R solutions. – ndoogan Jul 13 '18 at 22:13
5
You can do this with regular expressions using the function gsub on the "hello" object in your original post.
hello <- c('13.txt','12.txt','14.txt')
as.numeric(gsub("([0-9]+).*","\\1",hello))
#[1] 13 12 14
ndoogan
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3
Another regex solution
hello <- c("13.txt", "12.txt", "14.txt")
as.numeric(regmatches(hello, gregexpr("[0-9]+", hello)))
## [1] 13 12 14
CHP
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If you know your extensions are all .txt then you can use substr()
> hello <- c('13.txt','12.txt','14.txt')
> as.numeric(substr(hello, 1, nchar(hello) - 3))
#[1] 13 12 14
Gavin Simpson
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Jason Hendry
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