Time to spend some time with the docs! ?egexp
tells you: ". (Only ^ - \ ] are special inside character classes.)" See also inline below. Cheers, Bert On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 8:30 AM, Juliet Hannah <juliet.han...@gmail.com>wrote: > Is it correct that one does not need to escape special characters such as > "*" (are these > properly called metacharacters) inside []. If so, what is the logic to > this? > Huh? Are you aware that regular expressions are actually a context free grammar IIRC (computer science gurus, please confirm or correct)? > > mytest <- "he*llo" > sub("[*]","",mytest) > sub("\\*","",mytest) > > [] is easier to read for me than \\. Is this what people tend to use? > That would require a survey to answer, would it not? Tastes vary, as they say. > Thanks. > > [[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. > -- Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics Internal Contact Info: Phone: 467-7374 Website: http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm [[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.