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rtrim

Trim a string that has control character whitespace

x = rawToChar(as.raw(c(0xa0, 0x31, 0x31, 0x2e, 0x31, 0x33, 0x32, 0x35, 0x39, 0x32)))
trimws(x) # this doesn't trim it!

How can I trim x or any similar string that has leading and/or trailing whitespace that are not trimmed by trimws?

Disclosure: this question is the continuation of trimws bug? leading whitespace not removed but I was asked to create a separate question.

Edit: here is a suggested code, any more elegant solution would be welcomed

trimws2 = function(x) {
        sapply(x, FUN=function(x) {
          xraw = charToRaw(x)
          xraw[xraw==as.raw(0xa0)]=charToRaw(" ")
          trimws(rawToChar(xraw))
        })
      }
trimws2(x)
Solution

  • Use str_trim from stringr package.

    Data :

    > x = rawToChar(as.raw(c(0xa0, 0x31, 0x31, 0x2e, 0x31, 0x33, 0x32, 0x35, 0x39, 0x32)))
> x
[1] " 11.132592"

    and just write :

    library(stringr)

str_trim(x)
[1] "11.132592"