How to use the strsplit function with a period

Question

I would like to split the following string by its periods. I tried strsplit() with \".\" in the split argument, but did not get the re

Answer 1

You need to either place the dot . inside of a character class or precede it with two backslashes to escape it since the dot is a character of special meaning in regex meaning "match any single character (except newline)"

s <- 'I.want.to.split'
strsplit(s, '\\.')
# [[1]]
# [1] "I"     "want"  "to"    "split"