You can either use positive lookahead/lookbehind - but support for that is a bit flaky. Or write a proper regex, and use backreferences to keep what you need.
R > x <- "abc 1,1 ,1 1, x,y 2,3 " R > gsub("(\\d),(\\d)", "\\1.\\2", x, perl = TRUE) [1] "abc 1.1 ,1 1, x,y 2.3 " B. > On Feb 12, 2018, at 9:34 PM, Jim Lemon <drjimle...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Dennis, > How about: > > > # define the two values to search for > x<-2 > y<-3 > # create your search string and replacement string > repstring<-paste(x,y,sep=",") > newstring<-paste(x,y,sep=".") > # this is the string that you want to change > thetastring<-"SIGMA(2,3)" > sub(repstring,newstring,thetastring) > [1] "SIGMA(2.3)" > > Use gsub if you want to change multiple values > > Jim > > On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 1:22 PM, Dennis Fisher <fis...@plessthan.com> wrote: >> R 3.4.2 >> OS X >> >> Colleagues >> >> I would appreciate some help with regular expressions. >> >> I have string that looks like: >> " ITERATION ,THETA1 ,THETA2 >> ,THETA3 ,THETA4 ,THETA5 >> ,THETA6 ,THETA7 ,SIGMA(1,1) >> ,SIGMA(2,1) ,SIGMA(2,2)” >> >> In the entries that contain: >> (X,Y) # for example, SIGMA(1,1) >> I would like to replace the comma with a period, e.g., SIGMA(1.1) but NOT >> the other commas >> >> The end-result would be: >> " ITERATION ,THETA1 ,THETA2 >> ,THETA3 ,THETA4 ,THETA5 >> ,THETA6 ,THETA7 ,SIGMA(1.1) >> ,SIGMA(2.1) ,SIGMA(2.2)” >> >> Can someone provide the regular expression code to accomplish this? >> Thanks. >> >> Dennis >> >> Dennis Fisher MD >> P < (The "P Less Than" Company) >> Phone / Fax: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784) >> www.PLessThan.com >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see >> 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. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > 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. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.