I need help to clean a database in R.
I need to remove a point that is at the beginning of some lines, I'm using R and the formula sub("^.","", x) the problem is that using this formula eliminates the 1st line of my entire base, Is it possible to use a conditional?
example: Original database
.2199.00
99,90
18,013
.123.00'
What I need
2199.00
99,90
18,013
123.00'
using sub("^.","", x)
2199.00
9,90
8,013
23.00'
In regular expressions the point is a reserved character (ie, it means more than the point as a character). To determine the point you must escape the character with "\" . See the example.
x <- c(".2199.00", "99,90", "18,013", ".123.00")
x
#> [1] ".2199.00" "99,90" "18,013" ".123.00"
gsub("^.", "", x)
#> [1] "2199.00" "9,90" "8,013" "123.00"
gsub(".", "", x)
#> [1] "" "" "" ""
gsub("^\.", "", x)
#> [1] "2199.00" "99,90" "18,013" "123.00"
In particular "." matchea any character, so in the second example it replaces everything.