getsingle {MQMF}

getsingle extracts one number from an input line of characters

Description

getsingle splits up a text line and translates the first non-empty character string into a number. This function can be useful when parsing an input data file.

Usage

getsingle(inline, sep = ",")

Arguments

inline

the line of text, usually taken after using readLines to read in a text file

sep

the separator used to divide the numbers from descriptive text, defaults to a comma.

Value

a single number

Examples

x <- "12.3 , this is a number"
y <- "21.3 # 22.3 # here are two numbers"
getsingle(x)
getsingle(y,sep="#")
getsingle(y) # be sure to get the separator correct