Split column at multiple-character delimiter in data frame

Question

My question is very similar to the question below, with the added problem that I need to split by a double-space.

I would like to split this vector into columns.

text <- "first       second and second     third and third and third               fourth"

The result should be four columns reading "first", "second and second", "third and third and third", "fourth"

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 28 '16 at 19:38

We can use \\s{2,} to match the pattern of space that are 2 or more in strsplit

v1 <- strsplit(text, "\\s{2,}")[[1]]
v1
#[1] "first"                     "second and second"    
#[3] "third and third and third" "fourth"

This can be converted to data.frame using as.data.frame.list

setNames(as.data.frame.list(v1), paste0("col", 1:4))

1 Answers1