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HowtotrimleadingandtrailingwhitespaceinR?StackOverflow

27/12/2014

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Takethe2minutetour

How to trim leading and trailing whitespace in R?

Iamhavingsometroubleswithleadingandtrailingwhitespaceinadata.frame.EgIliketotakealookat
aspecific row ina data.frame basedonacertaincondition:
>myDummy[myDummy$country==c("Austria"),c(1,2,3:7,19)]
[1]codeHelpercountrydummyLIdummyLMIdummyUMI
[6]dummyHInonOECDdummyHIOECDdummyOECD
<0rows>(or0lengthrow.names)
IwaswonderingwhyIdidn'tgettheexpectedoutputsincethecountryAustriaobviouslyexistedinmy
data.frame .AfterlookingthroughmycodehistoryandtryingtofigureoutwhatwentwrongItried:
>myDummy[myDummy$country==c("Austria"),c(1,2,3:7,19)]
codeHelpercountrydummyLIdummyLMIdummyUMIdummyHInonOECDdummyHIOECD
18AUTAustria00001
dummyOECD
181
AllIhavechangedinthecommandisanadditionalwhitespaceafterAustria.
Furtherannoyingproblemsobviouslyarise.EgwhenIliketomergetwoframesbasedonthecountry
column.One data.frame uses "Austria" whiletheotherframehas "Austria" .Thematching
doesn'twork.
1. Isthereanicewayto'show'thewhitespaceonmyscreensothatiamawareoftheproblem?
2. AndcanIremovetheleadingandtrailingwhitespaceinR?
SofarIusedtowriteasimple Perl scriptwhichremovesthewhitespacebutitwouldbeniceifIcan
somehowdoitinsideR.
r

editedNov28'13at1:49
JeromyAnglim
8,990 3 49 105

askedFeb14'10at12:44
mropa
3,078 2 17 24

Ijustsawthat sub() usesthe Perl notationaswell.Sorryaboutthat.Iamgoingtotrytousethefunction.

Butformyfirstquestionidon'thaveasolutionyet. mropa Feb14'10at12:50
Ashadleypointeditthisregex"^\\s+|\\s+$"willidentifyleadingandtrailingwhitespace.sox<
gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$","",x)manyofR'sreadfunctionsashavethisoption:strip.white=FALSEJayFeb14'10
at15:11
addacomment

5 Answers
Probablythebestwayistohandlethetrailingwhitespaceswhenyoureadyourdatafile.Ifyouuse
read.csv or read.table youcansettheparameter strip.white=TRUE .
Ifyouwanttocleanstringsafterwardsyouoneofthesefunctions:
#returnsstringw/oleadingwhitespace
trim.leading<function(x)sub("^\\s+","",x)
#returnsstringw/otrailingwhitespace
trim.trailing<function(x)sub("\\s+$","",x)
#returnsstringw/oleadingortrailingwhitespace
trim<function(x)gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$","",x)
Touseoneofthesefunctionson myDummy$country :

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2261079/howtotrimleadingandtrailingwhitespaceinr

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27/12/2014

HowtotrimleadingandtrailingwhitespaceinR?StackOverflow
myDummy$country<trim(myDummy$country)

To'show'thewhitespaceyoucoulduse:
paste(myDummy$country)
whichwillshowyouthestringssurroundedbyquotationmarks(")makingwhitespaceseasiertospot.
editedFeb14'10at15:52

answeredFeb14'10at13:13
f3lix
14.6k 7 37 64

@f3lixohthosearesomenicetips!thanks! mropa Feb14'10at13:43

3 Ashadleypointeditthisregex"^\\s+|\\s+$"willidentifyleadingandtrailingwhitespace.sox<
gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$","",x)manyofR'sreadfunctionsashavethisoption:strip.white=FALSEJayFeb14'10
at15:10

@Jay:Thanksforthehint.Ichangedtheregexpsinmyanswertousetheshorter"\\s"insteadof"[\t]".
f3lixFeb14'10at15:46

8 Seealso str_trim inthe stringr package.RichieCottonFeb16'10at15:35

1 Plusonefor"Trimfunctionnowstoredforfutureuse"thanks!ChrisBeeleyJan17'12at9:56
show2morecomments

Tomanipulatethewhitespace,usestr_trim()inthestringrpackage.ThepackagehasmanualdatedFeb
15,2013andisinCRAN.Thefunctioncanalsohandlestringvectors.
install.packages("stringr",dependencies=TRUE)
require(stringr)
example(str_trim)
d4$clean2<str_trim(d4$V2)
(creditgoestocommenter:R.Cotton)
answeredFeb21'13at16:30
user56
785 1 10 23

1 +1Forbestpractice,mosteasy,mostconvenientsolution!petermeissnerOct16at12:24
addacomment

ad1)Toseewhitespacesyoucoulddirectlycall print.data.frame withmodifiedarguments:

print(head(iris),quote=TRUE)
#Sepal.LengthSepal.WidthPetal.LengthPetal.WidthSpecies
#1"5.1""3.5""1.4""0.2""setosa"
#2"4.9""3.0""1.4""0.2""setosa"
#3"4.7""3.2""1.3""0.2""setosa"
#4"4.6""3.1""1.5""0.2""setosa"
#5"5.0""3.6""1.4""0.2""setosa"
#6"5.4""3.9""1.7""0.4""setosa"
Seealso ?print.data.frame forotheroptions.
answeredFeb15'10at10:00
Marek
19.5k 5 38 62
addacomment

Asimplefunctiontoremoveleadingandtrailingwhitespace:
trim<function(x){
gsub("(^[[:space:]]+|[[:space:]]+$)","",x)
}
Usage:
>text="foobarbaz3"
>trim(text)
[1]"foobarbaz3"

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27/12/2014

HowtotrimleadingandtrailingwhitespaceinR?StackOverflow
answeredFeb19at13:37
BernhardKausler
1,541 10 23
addacomment

Usegreporgrepltofindobservationswithwhitespacesandsubtogetridofthem.
names<c("GangaDin\t","ShyamLal","Bulbul")
grep("[[:space:]]+$",names)
[1]13
grepl("[[:space:]]+$",names)
[1]TRUEFALSETRUE
sub("[[:space:]]+$","",names)
[1]"GangaDin""ShyamLal""Bulbul"
answeredFeb14'10at14:13
JyotirmoyBhattacharya
2,939 1 13 25

4 Or,alittlemoresuccinctly, "^\\s+|\\s+$" hadleyFeb14'10at14:45

1 Justwantedtopointout,thatonewillhavetouse gsub insteadof sub withhadley'sregexp.With sub it
willstriptrailingwhitespaceonlyifthereisnoleadingwhitespace...f3lixFeb14'10at15:50

Didn'tknowyoucoulduse\setc.withperl=FALSE.ThedocssaythatPOSIXsyntaxisusedinthatcase,but
thesyntaxacceptedisactuallyasupersetdefinedbytheTREregexlibrary
laurikari.net/tre/documentation/regexsyntaxJyotirmoyBhattacharyaFeb14'10at18:37

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