Cleaning strings in R: add punctuation w/o overwriting last character
- by spearmint
I'm new to R and unable to find other threads with a similar issue.
I'm cleaning data that requires punctuation at the end of each line. I am unable to add, say, a period without overwriting the final character of the line preceding the carriage return + line feed.
Sample code:
Data1 <- "%trn: dads sheep\r\n*MOT: hunn.\r\n%trn: yes.\r\n*MOT: ana mu\r\n%trn: where is it?"
Data2 <- gsub("[^[:punct:]]\r\n\\*", ".\r\n\\*", Data1)
The contents of Data2:
[1] "%trn: dads shee.\r\n*MOT: hunn.\r\n%trn: yes.\r\n*MOT: ana mu\r\n%trn: where is it?"
Notice the "p" of sheep was overwritten with the period. Any thoughts on how I could avoid this?
