Delete some part of a string in a column

Question

I have a lot of records like "LISTA CIVICA | blablabla". They are character-class under the column "partito". I need to cut off the "| bla bla bla" in order to obtain for all the records just "LISTA CIVICA".

I need to obtain only LISTA CIVICA for all those records.

I tried this code but it does not work

gsub(pattern="",replacement = "LISTA CIVICA",ammcom$partito)

akrun · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-21 15:28:18Z

2

We can use sub to match zero or more spaces (\\s*) followed by the | (escape it as it is a metacharacter for OR (|) followed by other characters (.*) and replace it with blank ("")

sub("\\s*\\|.*", "", str1)
#[1] "LISTA CIVICA" "LISTA CIVICA"

Or another option is regmatches/regexpr

trimws(regmatches(str1, regexpr("^[^|]+", str1)))
#[1] "LISTA CIVICA" "LISTA CIVICA"

data

str1 <- c("LISTA CIVICA | INSIEME PER ALBERA", "LISTA CIVICA | blablabla")

edited May 21, 2017 at 15:28

answered May 21, 2017 at 15:10

akrun

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5 Comments

Vito Fabrizio Brugnola Over a year ago

I need to change all the record in that way...I tried but it is not still working...

akrun Over a year ago

@VitoFabrizioBrugnola You need to change the str1 with ammcom$partito. Also, this is based on the example you showed

Vito Fabrizio Brugnola Over a year ago

I reforumlate: I have a lot of records like LISTA CIVICA | blablabla. They are character-class under the column "Partito". I need to cut off the "| bla bla bla" in order to obtain for all the records just "LISTA CIVICA".

akrun Over a year ago

@VitoFabrizioBrugnola You need to update your post. Others won't know what your pattern will be if you just show one example

akrun Over a year ago

@VitoFabrizioBrugnola That is what the regex is doing to match the | followed by any characters and replace it with blank

PKumar · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-21 15:28:35Z

2

Another way could be using lookaround expression:

library(stringr)
trimws(str_replace_all(text,"\\|(?>.*)",""))

OR

trimws(str_replace_all(text,"\\|.*",""))

Output:

 > trimws(str_replace_all(text,"\\|.*",""))
[1] "LISTA CIVICA" "LISTA CIVICA"

Input data:

text = c("LISTA CIVICA | INSIEME PER ALBERA","LISTA CIVICA | bla blabla")

edited May 21, 2017 at 15:28

answered May 21, 2017 at 15:23

PKumar

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Comments

Vito Fabrizio Brugnola · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-21 16:46:15Z

1

A friend of mine found out how to fix my problem.

length(ammcom$partito[grep("^LISTA",ammcom$partito)])
L <- rep("LISTA CIVICA", 92033)
ammcom$partito[grep("^LISTA",ammcom$partito)] <- L

edited May 21, 2017 at 16:46

user6655984

answered May 21, 2017 at 16:24

Vito Fabrizio Brugnola

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Comments

xraynaud · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-21 15:18:06Z

0

If the string you want to keep is always the before the |, you can also split the string around | and retain only the first element:

str1 <- "LISTA CIVICA | INSIEME PER ALBERA"

unlist(lapply(strsplit(str1,"\\|"), function(x) x[[1]]))

answered May 21, 2017 at 15:18

xraynaud

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1 Comment

Vito Fabrizio Brugnola Over a year ago

Sorry man, i corrected my questione, I was not so cleare at the first attempt (my first question on Stack's)...be patient, please! ;)

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