[R] Extract letters from a column

[SH]

mmm... great!  Thanks a lot all of you for helps!!!

Steve

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 10:44 AM, Marc Schwartz <marc_schwartz at me.com> wrote:
> This could be done in a single step using gsub() with back references in the regex.
>
>> gsub("^(.{3}).* (.{3}).*$", "\\1\\2", "Tom Cruise")
> [1] "TomCru"
>
> Regards,
>
> Marc Schwartz
>
>
> On Mar 13, 2013, at 9:21 AM, SH <emptican at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What I want to do is to extrac three letters from first and last name
>> and to combine them to make another column 'abb'.  The column 'abb' is
>> to be a my final product.  I can make column 'abb' using 'paste'
>> function once I have two parts from the first column 'name'.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Steve
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Jorge I Velez
>> <jorgeivanvelez at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Try
>>>
>>> substr(tempdf$abb 4, 6)
>>>
>>> --JIV
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:15 AM, SH <emptican at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear Jorge,
>>>>
>>>> I gave me this result (below) since it defines starting from the forth
>>>> letter and ending 6th letter from the first element.
>>>>
>>>>> substr(tempdf$name, 4, 6)
>>>> [1] " Cr" "ad " "old"
>>>>
>>>> I would like to have letters from first and second elements if possible.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for replying,
>>>>
>>>> Steve
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 10:10 AM, Jorge I Velez
>>>> <jorgeivanvelez at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Dear SH,
>>>>>
>>>>> Hmmm... what about
>>>>>
>>>>> substr(tempdf$name, 4, 6))
>>>>>
>>>>> ?
>>>>>
>>>>> HTH,
>>>>> Jorge.-
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:06 AM, SH <emptican at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dear list:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I would like to extract three letters from first and second elements
>>>>>> in one column and make a new column.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For example below,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> tempdf = read.table("clipboard", header=T, sep='\t')
>>>>>>> tempdf
>>>>>>              name var1 var2    abb
>>>>>> 1      Tom Cruiser    1    6 TomCru
>>>>>> 2       Bread Pett    2    5 BrePet
>>>>>> 3 Arnold Schwiezer    3    7 ArnSch
>>>>>>> (p1 = substr(tempdf$name, 1, 3))
>>>>>> [1] "Tom" "Bre" "Arn"
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I was able to extract three letters from first name, however, I don't
>>>>>> know how to extract three letters from last name (i.e., 'Cru', 'Pet',
>>>>>> and 'Sch').  Can anyone give me a suggestion?  Many thanks in advance.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Steve
>