Try: s1 <- "hello.world" s2 <- c("GLEm0045", "GLEn0042", "GLEz0048")
substr(s1,1,5) #or gsub("\\..*","",s1) n <- 5 substr(s2,nchar(s2)-n +1,nchar(s2)) A.K. If I have a column that has "hello.world" how could I extract hello? In addition in a column how can I extract the last 5 characters? For example from character G1Em0017 I wish to extract m0017 . ______________________________________________ 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.