R: converting comma separated entry to columns with non-characters

Question

I have a column of names in R that are separated by a comma.

For example:

    John, Doe
    Rebecca, Homes

I'd like to separate the first and last names into separate columns.

One additional problem I have is that sometimes there will be a name that doesn't have a comma. For example:

    John, Doe
    Rebecca, Homes
    Organization LLC

I've looked at using strsplit(a, ","), but I get the following error Error in strsplit(wn, ",") : non-character argument.

Here is an example within Stack Convert comma separated entry to columns

Any help regarding solving this simple problem will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

agstudy · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-26T16:53:02.393

In 2 steps :

You can use read.table with fill=TRUE, to read all lines (You can also use readLines)
treat without commas as seprator.

The code is something like this :

aa <- read.table(text='John, Doe
Rebecca, Homes
Organization LLC',sep=',',fill=TRUE,colClasses='character')

## treat lines without comma
aa[nchar(aa$V2) ==0,] <- 
      do.call(rbind,strsplit(aa[nchar(aa$V2) ==0,]$V1,' ')) ## space as separator :I assume you 
                                                               don't have compound  name

> aa
            V1     V2
1         John    Doe
2      Rebecca  Homes
3 Organization    LLC

EDIT better method : I use a reglar expression to replace any space by a comma to have regular separator. I assume that you don't have any compound name.

ff <- readLines(textConnection('John, Doe
Rebecca, Homes
Organization LLC'))
do.call(rbind,
strsplit(gsub('[ ]|, |,[ ]',',',ff),','))

if I want to include the column name instead of text='John, Doe Rebecca, Homes'. What should I used instead of text = ? — Young Grasshopper, Apr 26 '13 at 17:44

R: converting comma separated entry to columns with non-characters

1 Answers1