how to extract the first number from each string in a vector in R?

Question

I am new to regex in R. Here I have a vector where I am interested in extracting the first occurance of a number in each string of the vector .

I have a vector calle

Answer 1

You can do this very nicely with the str_first_number() function from the strex package, or for more general needs, there's the str_nth_number() function.

pacman::p_load(strex)
shootsummary <- c("Aaron Alexis, 34, a military veteran and contractor ...",
                  "Pedro Vargas, 42, set fire to his apartment, killed six ...",
                  "John Zawahri, 23, armed with a homemade assault rifle ...",
                  "John Zawahri, 23, armed with a homemade assault rifle ...",
                  "Dennis Clark III, 27, shot and killed his girlfriend ...",
                  "Kurt Myers, 64, shot six people in neighboring ..."
)
str_first_number(shootsummary)
#> [1] 34 42 23 23 27 64
str_nth_number(shootsummary, n = 1)
#> [1] 34 42 23 23 27 64

Created on 2018-09-03 by the reprex package (v0.2.0).