R：正则表达式可以匹配方括号中的模式，但有例外

Question

I have this string:

“[DELW][0x00][BKSP][0x00][0x12][0xE0][0xF0][0xEF][DOWN][UP]asdkjaosdkj[ENTER]”

I want to remove all the keytab (in square bracket) starting with numbers like [0x00], [0xF0].

Final result would be: “[DELW][BKSP][DOWN][UP]asdkjaosdkj[ENTER]”

I thought about using str_replace but having a hard time coming up with regex that works. I would really appreciate all the help. Thank you!

Answer 1

If your stuff to remove is always 0x and two hex digits then:

> gsub("\\[0x..\\]","",s)
[1] "[DELW][BKSP][DOWN][UP]asdkjaosdkj[ENTER]"

Note the \\ needed to stop [] being special, and the \\\\ to get a real backslash into an R string.

If you want to pull in the stringr package you can do it with the same pattern:

> stringr::str_replace_all(s, "\\[0x..\\]","")
[1] "[DELW][BKSP][DOWN][UP]asdkjaosdkj[ENTER]"

But base::gsub keeps things light.

Answer 2

I think you can try this

\[[^0x]+]

Explanation

\\[ - Literally match [ character.

[^0x]+ - Match anything one or more time except 0x.

] - Literally match ] character