“last name, first name” -> “first name last name” in serialized strings

Question

I have a bunch of strings that contain lists of names in last name, first name format, separated by commas, like so:

names <- c(\'Beaufoy         


        

Answer 1

I'm in favor of @AnandaMahto's Answer, but just for fun, this illustrates another method using scan, split, and rapply.

names <- c(names, 'Chambers, John, Ihaka, Ross, Gentleman, Robert')

# extract names
snames <- 
lapply(names, function(x) scan(text=x, what='', sep=',', strip.white=TRUE, quiet=TRUE))

# break up names
snames<-lapply(snames, function(x) split(x, rep(seq(length(x) %/% 2), each=2)))

# collapse together, reversed
rapply(snames, function(x) paste(x[2:1], collapse=' '))