You can use the following methods to remove certain characters from a string in R:
Method 1: Remove One Specific Character from String
gsub('character', '', my_string)
Method 2: Remove Multiple Characters from String
gsub('[character1character2]', '', my_string)
Method 3: Remove All Special Characters from String
gsub('[^[:alnum:] ]', '', my_string)
The following examples show how to use each method in practice.
Method 1: Remove One Specific Character from String
The following code shows how to remove all instances of ‘WW‘ in a certain string:
#define string my_string <- 'HeyWW My namWWe is Doug' #replace 'WW' in string my_string <- gsub('WW', '', my_string) #view updated string my_string [1] "Hey My name is Doug"
Notice that all instances of ‘WW‘ have been removed from the string.
Method 2: Remove Multiple Characters from String
The following code shows how to remove all instances of ‘STRING1‘ and ‘STRING2‘ in a certain string:
#define some string
my_string <- 'HeySTRING1 My nameSTRING2 is DougSTRING2'
#replace WW in string
my_string <- gsub('[STRING1STRING2]', '', my_string)
#view updated string
my_string
[1] "Hey My name is Doug"
Notice that all instances of ‘STRING1‘ and ‘STRING2‘ have been removed from the string.
Method 3: Remove All Special Characters from String
The following code shows how to remove all special characters from a string.
Note: Special characters are any characters that are not numbers or letters.
#define string my_string <- 'H*ey My nam%e is D!oug' #replace all special characters in string my_string <- gsub('[^[:alnum:] ]', '', my_string) #view updated string my_string [1] "Hey My name is Doug"
Notice that all special characters have been removed from the string.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in R:
How to Find Location of Character in a String in R
How to Concatenate Strings in R
How to Convert a Vector to String in R
How to Convert Character to Factor in R