R Language Modifying strings by substitution Rearrange character strings using capture groups
Example
If you want to change the order of a character strings you can use parentheses in the pattern to group parts of the string together. These groups can in the replacement argument be addresed using consecutive numbers.
The following example shows how you can reorder a vector of names of the form "surname, forename" into a vector of the form "forename surname".
library(randomNames)
set.seed(1)
strings <- randomNames(5)
strings
# [1] "Sigg, Zachary" "Holt, Jake" "Ortega, Sandra" "De La Torre, Nichole"
# [5] "Perkins, Donovon"
sub("^(.+),\\s(.+)$", "\\2 \\1", strings)
# [1] "Zachary Sigg" "Jake Holt" "Sandra Ortega" "Nichole De La Torre"
# [5] "Donovon Perkins"
If you only need the surname you could just address the first pairs of parentheses.
sub("^(.+),\\s(.+)", "\\1", strings)
# [1] "Sigg" "Holt" "Ortega" "De La Torre" "Perkins"
