R: removing the last three dots from a string

Question

I have a text data file that I likely will read with readLines. The initial portion of each string contains a lot of gibberish followed by the data I need. Th

Answer 1

Reverse the string
Reverse the pattern you're searching for if necessary - it's not in your case
Reverse the result

[haiku-pseudocode]

a = 'first string of junk... 0.2 0 1' // string to search
b = 'junk' // pattern to match 

ra = reverseString(a) // now equals '1 0 2.0 ...knuj fo gnirts tsrif'
rb = reverseString (b) // now equals 'knuj'

// run your regular expression search / replace - search in 'ra' for 'rb'
// put the result in rResult
// and then unreverse the result
// apologies for not knowing the syntax for 'R' regex

[/haiku-pseudocode]