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Asked: 2026-06-17T23:01:35+00:00

I read many posts on splitting strings in R. However, I am running into

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I read many posts on splitting strings in R. However, I am running into an error which I think is due to the way the variables were read into R i.e., space after the date in some cases because the ID is shorter. I am trying to split the character variable “VESSELID” into 2 new variables: “vesselID” and “DATE”. Below is a subset of my dataset.

> dput(df)
structure(list(SETID = c(24153L, 24187L, 24215L, 31990L, 31990L, 
31995L, 31995L, 31995L, 31996L, 31996L, 31996L, 31997L, 31997L, 
32002L, 32002L, 32002L, 32002L, 32003L, 32003L, 32003L), VESSELID = c("6830 2002/08/13  ", 
"6830 2002/08/12  ", "6830 2002/08/15  ", "105372 2002/08/23", 
"105372 2002/08/23", "104234 2002/07/20", "104234 2002/07/20", 
"104234 2002/07/20", "104234 2002/07/21", "104234 2002/07/21", 
"104234 2002/07/21", "104234 2002/07/22", "104234 2002/07/22", 
"5744 2002/08/14  ", "5744 2002/08/14  ", "5744 2002/08/14  ", 
"5744 2002/08/14  ", "5744 2002/08/13  ", "5744 2002/08/13  ", 
"5744 2002/08/13  ")), .Names = c("SETID", "VESSELID"), row.names = c(1L, 
2L, 3L, 10L, 11L, 12L, 13L, 14L, 15L, 16L, 17L, 18L, 19L, 20L, 
21L, 22L, 23L, 24L, 25L, 26L), class = "data.frame")

I did try the following:

library(reshape2)
test <- data.frame(df, colsplit(df$VESSELID, split= " ",names=c("vesselID","DATE")))

However, I get this error message:

Error in colsplit(log21$VESSELID, split = " ", names = c("vesselID", "DATE")) : 
      unused argument(s) (split = " ")

The split command doesn’t seem to be able to work properly. I don’t know how to fix my character string.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The argument name is not split, it is pattern :

    test <- data.frame(df, colsplit(df$VESSELID, pattern = " ",names=c("vesselID","DATE")))

    gives :

       SETID          VESSELID vesselID         DATE
1  24153 6830 2002/08/13       6830 2002/08/13  
2  24187 6830 2002/08/12       6830 2002/08/12  
3  24215 6830 2002/08/15       6830 2002/08/15  
10 31990 105372 2002/08/23   105372   2002/08/23
11 31990 105372 2002/08/23   105372   2002/08/23
12 31995 104234 2002/07/20   104234   2002/07/20
13 31995 104234 2002/07/20   104234   2002/07/20
14 31995 104234 2002/07/20   104234   2002/07/20
15 31996 104234 2002/07/21   104234   2002/07/21
16 31996 104234 2002/07/21   104234   2002/07/21
17 31996 104234 2002/07/21   104234   2002/07/21
18 31997 104234 2002/07/22   104234   2002/07/22
19 31997 104234 2002/07/22   104234   2002/07/22
20 32002 5744 2002/08/14       5744 2002/08/14  
21 32002 5744 2002/08/14       5744 2002/08/14  
22 32002 5744 2002/08/14       5744 2002/08/14  
23 32002 5744 2002/08/14       5744 2002/08/14  
24 32003 5744 2002/08/13       5744 2002/08/13  
25 32003 5744 2002/08/13       5744 2002/08/13  
26 32003 5744 2002/08/13       5744 2002/08/13
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