[R] regexpr mystery can not remove trailing spaces

[Matt Shotwell]

On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 09:22 -0400, Petr PIKAL wrote:
> Hi
> 
> > dput(bbb)
> c("02.06.10 12:40   ", "02.06.10 12:00   ", "02.06.10 11:00   ", 
> "02.06.10 10:00   ", "02.06.10 09:00   ", "02.06.10 08:00   ", 
> "02.06.10 07:00   ", "02.06.10 06:00   ", "02.06.10 05:00   ", 
> "02.06.10 04:00   ", "02.06.10 03:00   ", "02.06.10 02:00   ", 
> "02.06.10 01:00   ", "02.06.10 00:00   ", "01.06.10 23:00   ", 
> "01.06.10 22:00   ", "01.06.10 21:00   ", "01.06.10 20:00   ", 
> "01.06.10 19:00   ", "01.06.10 18:00   ", "01.06.10 17:00   ", 
> "01.06.10 16:00   ", "01.06.10 15:00   ", "01.06.10 14:00   ", 
> "01.06.10 13:00   ", "01.06.10 05:00   ", "31.05.10 05:00   ", 
> "30.05.10 05:00   ", "29.05.10 05:00   ", "28.05.10 05:00   ", 
> "27.05.10 05:00   ")
> >
> 
> For simplicity I change the name and put it to single variable.
> I also reinstalled R to recent R-devel
> 
> > sub('\\w+$', '', bbb[1])

my first message had a typo, should have been with '\\s' rather than '\
\w'.

sub('\\s+$', '', bbb[1])

> [1] "02.06.10 12:40   "
> > sub('[:space:]', '', bbb[1])

this should be

sub('[[:space:]]+$', '', bbb[1])

that's why it stripped the ':' and not white space

> [1] "02.06.10 1240   "
> >
> 
> I also tried Matt's suggestion but it did not help. 
> 
> Regards
> Petr
> 
> Joris Meys <jorismeys at gmail.com> napsal dne 02.06.2010 14:35:19:
> 
> > Could you provide us with dput(becva$V1[1])?
> > Cheers
> > Joris
> 
> > On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Petr PIKAL <petr.pikal at precheza.cz> 
> wrote:
> > Dear all
> > 
> > I encountered strange problem with regexpr replacement
> > 
> > I made this character object
> > 
> > str <- "02.06.10 12:40     "
> > 
> > > str(str)
> >  chr "02.06.10 12:40      "
> > 
> > I read in an object which seems to be quite similar
> > 
> > > str(as.character(becva$V1)[1])
> >  chr "02.06.10 12:40   "
> > 
> > However I can not remove trailing spaces from it
> > 
> > > sub(' +$', '', as.character(becva$V1[1]))
> > 
> > [1] "02.06.10 12:40   "
> > > sub(' +$', '', str)
> > [1] "02.06.10 12:40"
> > >
> > 
> > Do somebody have an idea what to do?
> > 
> > $version.string
> > [1] "R version 2.12.0 Under development (unstable) (2010-04-25 r51820)"
> > 
> > on Windows
> > 
> > Regards
> > Petr
> > 
> > ______________________________________________
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> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Joris Meys
> > Statistical Consultant
> > 
> > Ghent University
> > Faculty of Bioscience Engineering 
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> > 
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> > 
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> 
> ______________________________________________
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