Extracting string inbetween two string patterns in R

Question

If I have a character vector:

 links <- c("http://fdsfdsfdsfsdaaa.com/t5/this/bd-p/fdsfsdfdsfscshdad/dasd",
            "http://ffdsfdddddfdf.com/t5/that/bd-p/fdsfdsfsddfjfsd")

I want to extract "this" and "that" knowing that they are between "t5" and "bd-p." Totally lost on this one.

agstudy · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-14 22:02:05Z

4

Using sub:

sub(".*t5/(.*)/bd-p.*","\\1",links)
[1] "this" "that"

answered Jul 14, 2014 at 22:02

agstudy

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1 Comment

theamateurdataanalyst Over a year ago

Really awesome! Thank you agstudy and anyone else that tried. I love this community so much.

Jota · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-14 22:06:06Z

1

Try this:

lapply(regmatches(links, regexec("t5/(.*)/bd-p", links)), '[', 2)
[[1]]
[1] "this"

[[2]]
[1] "that"

regexec combined with regmatches is good for getting subexpressions (i.e. the stuff in the parentheses). regmatches will return the whole search string and the subexpression, which is why I extract only the second element, which is the subexpression.

edited Jul 14, 2014 at 22:06

answered Jul 14, 2014 at 21:56

Jota

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