remove text after character in r

To remove text after a certain character in R, there are a few methods you can use depending on the complexity of the string.

Here's an example where we remove text after the first underscore character in a string:

main.r
# Example string
my_string <- "hello_world_this_is_an_example"

# Remove text after first underscore using `substr`
new_string <- substr(my_string, 1, regexpr("_", my_string) - 1)
new_string
# Output: "hello"

# Remove text after first underscore using `gsub`
new_string <- gsub("_.*", "", my_string)
new_string
# Output: "hello"
330 chars
13 lines

In the substr approach, we used the regexpr function to locate the position of the first underscore character in the string, and then used substr to extract the portion of the string before that position.

In the gsub approach, we used a regular expression to match everything after the first underscore (represented by "_.*"), and replaced it with an empty string using gsub function.