Extract text name from String

Question

I have a column with value as

\"RED LOBSTER CA04606\" or \"Red Lobster NewYork WY245\" n so on

How can I extract just the name Red Lobster or Red Lobster N

Answer 1

Alternative gsub version:

x <- c("RED LOBSTER CA04606","Red Lobster NewYork WY245")

gsub("(.+)\\s+(.+$)","\\1",x)
[1] "RED LOBSTER"         "Red Lobster NewYork"

and to get the other part of the text:

gsub("(.+)\\s+(.+$)","\\2",x)
[1] "CA04606" "WY245"