Replacing the specific values in columns of data frame using gsub in R

Question

I have data.frame as follows

> df
ID      Value
A_001   DEL-1:7:35-8_1 
A_002   INS-4l:5_74:d
B_023   0 
C_891   2
D_787   8
E_865   DEL-3:65:1s:b
         


        

Answer 1

Just remove the character class and add .* next to that group. sub alone would do this job.

df$value <- sub("^(DEL|INS).*", "", df$value)

Inside a character class, each char would be treated speartely not as a whole string. So [DEL] would match a single character from the given list, it may be D or E or L .

Answer 2

First letter is not digital:

df$value <- gsub("^\\D.*", "", df$value)

Or there is '-' in delete value:

df$value <- gsub(".*-.*", "", df$value)