David Hajage wrote: > Hello R users, > > I have a string, for example: > x <- "\t\tabc\t def" > > This string can contain any number of tabulations. I want to replace each > tabulation of the begining of the string by the same number of space: > " abc\t def" > > I'm trying to do this with gsub : > >> gsub("\t", " ", x) # replace every \t >> > [1] " abc def" > >> sub("^\t", " ", x) # replace only the first \t >> > [1] " \tabc\t def" > >> sub("^\t*", " ", x) # replace all beginning \t, but only one space >> > [1] " abc\t def" > > How can I do this ? > >
there may be better solutions, but this should do: strings = c('pure', '\t<- 1 removed', '\t\t<- 2 removed, 1 left ->\t') gsub('\t|(*COMMIT)(*FAIL)', ' ', strings, perl=TRUE) # "pure" " <- 1 removed" " <- 2 removed, 1 left ->\t" vQ ______________________________________________ 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.