You can use the following methods to remove white spaces from strings in R:
Method 1: Remove All Whitespaces Using gsub()
updated_string
Method 2: Remove All Whitespaces Using str_replace_all()
library(stringr)
updated_string Method 3: Remove Leading & Trailing Whitespaces Using str_trim()
library(stringr) #remove all trailing whitespace updated_string right") #remove all leading whitespace updated_string left")
The following examples show how to use each method in practice.
Example 1: Remove All Whitespaces Using gsub()
The following code shows how to use the gsub() function from base R to remove all whitespaces from a given string:
#create string
my_string
#remove all whitespace from string
updated_string #view updated string
updated_string
[1] "Checkoutthiscoolstring"
Notice that all whitespaces have been removed from the string.
Example 2: Remove All Whitespaces Using str_replace_all()
The following code shows how to use the str_replace_all() function from the stringr package in R to remove all whitespaces from a given string:
library(stringr)
#create string
my_string
#remove all whitespace from string
updated_string #view updated string
updated_string
[1] "Checkoutthiscoolstring" Notice that all whitespaces have been removed from the string.
Example 3: Remove Leading & Trailing Whitespaces Using str_trim()
The following code shows how to use the str_trim() function from the stringr package in R to remove all leading whitespace from a given string:
library(stringr)
#create string with leading whitespace
my_string
#remove all leading whitespace from string
updated_string left")
#view updated string
updated_string
[1] "Check out this cool string"
Notice that all of the leading whitespace has been removed.
The following code shows how to use the str_trim() function to remove all trailing whitespace from a given string:
library(stringr)
#create string with trailing whitespace
my_string
#remove all trailing whitespace from string
updated_string right")
#view updated string
updated_string
[1] "Check out this cool string" Notice that all of the trailing whitespace has been removed.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in R:
How to Find Location of Character in a String in R
How to Concatenate Strings in R
How to Convert a Vector to String in R
How to Convert Character to Factor in R