[R] Removing a dollar sign from a character vector

[James Plante]

What I’ve got:
# sessionInfo()
R version 3.2.3 (2015-12-10)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
Running under: OS X 10.11.3 (El Capitan)

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] XML_3.98-1.3 dplyr_0.4.3 

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] magrittr_1.5      R6_2.1.2          assertthat_0.1    rsconnect_0.4.1.4
[5] parallel_3.2.3    DBI_0.3.1         tools_3.2.3       Rcpp_0.12.3     

> str(y) #toy vector, subset of larger vector in a dataframe of ~4,600 rows.
 chr [1:5] "$1,000.00 " "$1,000.00 " "$1,000.00 " "$2,600.00 " "$2,600.00 “

y is a subset of a column in a dataframe that’s too big to post. I tried the commands listed here on the dataframe and it didn’t work. So I’m using a small subset to find out where my error is. It’s being a PITA, and I’m trying to solve it. What I want is a vector of numbers: 1000, 1000, 1000, 2600, 2,600. 

What I’ve tried:
> y
[1] "$1,000.00 " "$1,000.00 " "$1,000.00 " "$2,600.00 " "$2,600.00 "
> gsub("$", "", y)
[1] "$1,000.00 " "$1,000.00 " "$1,000.00 " "$2,600.00 " "$2,600.00 “ # no change. Why?
> gsub(".00", "", y)  # note: that’s dot zero zero, replace with “"
[1] "$10 " "$10 " "$10 " "$2, " "$2, “  #WTF?

I’ve also tried sapply and apply, but haven’t yet tried a loop. (These were done in desperation; gsub ought to work the way the help says.) I’ve tried lots more than is listed here, over and over, with no results. I’d be grateful for any guidance you can provide. 

Thanks in advance,

Jim Plante