Replace portion of string

Question

I want to replace anything that has issue # 000... or issue #000... (note space between digits and pound sign) with an href url based on the digits part of that string. The ... represents any number of digits.

## Here is a MWE string:

News <- readLines(n=5)
CHANGES

* Fixed bug see GitHub issue #12

* Fixed bug see GitHub issue # 111. (John Doe)

News

## Here are the pieces of the href url

## Roots
roota <- "<a href=\"https://github.com/trinker/qdap/issues/"
rootb <- "\">"
rootc <- "</a>"

## Here's the desired output

c("CHANGES",                                       
    "",                                              
    "* Fixed bug see GitHub <a href=\"https://github.com/trinker/qdap/issues/12\">issue #12</a>" ,             
    "",                                              
    "* Fixed bug see GitHub <a href=\"https://github.com/trinker/qdap/issues/111\">issue #111</a>. (John Doe)"
)

## Here's my initial attempt at extracting the pieces

gsub("(.)(issue)(.[#])(\\s*)([0-9]+)", "\\1", News)

## Grabbing the digits I could almost paste them together with

paste(roota, DIGIT_GRABBED, rootb, "issue #, DIGIT_GRABBED, rootc)

*I marked this with a regex tag but note that R regex is a particular breed and you should be familiar with R if you answer.

@Josh yeah, fixed that.

Tyler Rinker
– Tyler Rinker

2013-09-05 19:17:59 +00:00
Commented Sep 5, 2013 at 19:17 — Tyler Rinker
– Tyler Rinker, Commented Sep 5, 2013 at 19:17

sgibb · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-05 19:15:48Z

1

You could simply use:

gsub(pattern="issue *# *([0-9]+)", replacement="<a href=\"https://github.com/trinker/qdap/issues/\\1\">issue #\\1</a>", x=News)

answered Sep 5, 2013 at 19:15

sgibb

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1 Comment

Tyler Rinker Over a year ago

Perfect and easier than what I was trying. I'll check as soon as 10 mins is up.

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