[R] Dealing with parentheses within variable names

[Bert Gunter]

Please read ?regex, where it says:

" Any metacharacter with special meaning may be quoted by preceding it
with a backslash. The metacharacters in EREs are . \ | ( ) [ { ^ $ * +
?, but note that whether these have a special meaning depends on the
context. "

So use:
sub("\(\)","", names(dataFrame))

instead.

-- Bert


On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 8:08 AM, Jesus Munoz Serrano
<jesusmunozserrano at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all
>
> I'm having some problems with a data set that has parenthesis within the variable names. A example of this kind of variable names is the following:
>
>                                 fBodyGyroskewness()Z
>
> The case is that R is having a lot of troubles to identify the variable (probably it does understand it like a function). I've tried (among other things) to remove the parenthesis from the name using the following command:
>
>                                 names(dataFrame) <- sub("()","", names(dataFrame))
>
> but It didn't work.  Sorry if it's a silly issue but I would really appreciate if anybody could help me. Thank you very much.
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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-- 

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

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