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I have a list of filenames like this:

datalist

EU_AU_abc100.dat
EU_AU_abc200.dat
EU_AU_abc300.dat
EU_AU_abc.dat

I want to have this:

abc100
abc200
abc300
abc

How can I do that? I know the substr(datalist, start = 6, stop = 12) for example, but that doesnt suit for the last example. Any idea how to solve this? Can I use the .dat as stop-marker somehow?

Mr.Spock
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1 Answers1

3

Using gsub 

gsub('.*_([^_]+)\\.dat','\\1',c("datalist EU_AU_abc100.dat","EU_AU_abc.dat"))
[1] "abc100" "abc"

.*_ any character followed by a _
([^_]+) capture any character except a _ between .*_ and .dat as group 1. Then returns this group \\1

A. Suliman
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