Hi John, Try
gsub("[.]","",txt) See "Extended Regular Expressions" in ?regex. HTH, Jorge * * On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 12:49 AM, Sparks, John James <> wrote: > Dear R Users, > > I am working with gsub for the first time. I am trying to remove some > characters from a string. I have hit the problem where the period is the > shorthand for 'everything' in the R language when what I want to remove is > the actual periods. In the example below, I simply want to remove the > periods as I have removed the comma, but instead the complete string is > wiped out. I would appreciate it if someone could let me know how I > communicate that I want to remove the period verbatim to R. > > Many thanks. > --John Sparks > > > txt="This is a test. However, it is only a test." > > txt2<-gsub(",","",txt) > > txt2 > [1] "This is a test. However it is only a test." > > txt3<-gsub(".","",txt) > > txt3 > [1] "" > > > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.