Separating column using separate (tidyr) via dplyr on a first encountered digit

Question

I\'m trying to separate a rather messy column into two columns containing period and description. My data resembles the extract below:

set.         


        

Answer 1

I think this might do it.

library(tidyr)
separate(dta, indicator, c("indicator", "period"), "(?<=[a-z]) ?(?=[0-9])")
#           indicator   period    values
# 1     someindicator     2001 0.2655087
# 2     someindicator     2011 0.3721239
# 3         some text 20022008 0.5728534
# 4 another indicator     2003 0.9082078

The following is an explanation of the regular expression, brought to you by regex101.

• (?<=[a-z]) is a positive lookbehind - it asserts that [a-z] (match a single character present in the range between a and z (case sensitive)) can be matched
• ? matches the space character in front of it literally, between zero and one time, as many times as possible, giving back as needed
• (?=[0-9]) is a positive lookahead - it asserts that [0-9] (match a single character present in the range between 0 and 9) can be matched