Re: abbreviate long names

[Spencer Graves <spencer.graves@PDF.COM>]

If you want short names, not necessarily splitting on specific 
characters like "~", then "abbreviate" might do what you want.
Spencer Graves

John Fox wrote:
> Dear Simon,
>
> At 08:40 AM 3/23/2003 -0500, Rosenfeld, Simon (NIH/NCI) wrote:
>
> > Dear colleagues:
> > I have a set of long names structured as follows:
> > ABCD~~blablablablablablablablabla
> > EFGHI~~boobooboobooboo
> > JKL~~foofoofooblablabooboo
> > MNOPQRST~~oopsoopsoops
> > ,etc.
> > I need to abbreviate these names in order to obtain
> > ABCD
> > EFGHI
> > JKL
> > MNOPQRST
> > etc.
> > Any suggestions?
>
> You can use regexpr and substring; for example:
>
>  > name <- "ABCD~~blablablablablablablablabla"
>  > substring(name, 1,  regexpr("~", name) - 1)
> [1] "ABCD"
>  >
>
> I hope that this helps,
>  John
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> John Fox
> Department of Sociology
> McMaster University
> Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M4
> email: jfox@mcmaster.ca
> phone: 905-525-9140x23604
> web: www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
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