[R] extracting characters from a string

[arun]

Hi,
You could try this:
dat1<-read.table(text=pub,sep=",",fill=TRUE,stringsAsFactors=F)
dat2<- as.data.frame(do.call(cbind,lapply(dat1,function(x) gsub(" $","",gsub("^ |\\w+$","",x)))),stringsAsFactors=F)


 dat2
#        V1              V2         V3         V4
#1   Brown          Santos       Rome   Don Juan 
#2 Benigni                                       
#3  Arstra   Van den Hoops   lamarque       
A.K.

----- Original Message -----
From: Biau David <djmbiau at yahoo.fr>
To: r help list <r-help at r-project.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 12:38 PM
Subject: [R] extracting characters from a string

Dear All,

I have a data frame of vectors of publication names such as 'pub':

pub1 <- c('Brown DK, Santos R, Rome DF, Don Juan X')
pub2 <- c('Benigni D')
pub3 <- c('Arstra SD, Van den Hoops DD, lamarque D')

pub <- rbind(pub1, pub2, pub3)


I would like to construct a dataframe with only author's last name and each last name in columns and the publication in rows. Basically I want to get rid of the initials (max 2, always before a comma) and spaces surounding last name. I would like to avoid a loop.

ps: If I could have even a short explanation of the code that extract the values of the character string that would also be great!

 
David

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