Replacing all special characters from all strings in vector R

Question

I have a vector

> head(raw)
[1] "User1,alpha > iota > iota > iota > theta > iota > iota > eta > beta > alpha > beta > alpha > beta > beta > iota > alpha"                                                                   
[2] "User2,iota > iota > iota > iota > zeta > zeta > iota > zeta > iota > iota > zeta"                                                                                                          
[3] "User3,alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > theta > alpha > alpha > zeta > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha > alpha"
[4] "User4,eta > eta > eta"                                                                                                                                                                     
[5] "User5,iota > iota > theta > alpha"                                                                                                                                                         
[6] "User6,iota > alpha > alpha > iota > iota > iota > theta"   

I want for all elements in the vector, every " > " be replaced with ",". How can I achieve this?

sample element i want: "User5,iota,iota,theta,alpha"

Answer 1

Use gsub.

gsub("\\s*>\\s*", ",", s)

or

gsub("[[:blank:]]*>[[:blank:]]*", ",", x)

\\\\s* would match zero or more white-space characters. [[:blank:]] would match any kind of horizontal white-space character.

Answer 2

Seems you want to remove possible blanks as well:

gsub(" *> *", ",", vec)

#> gsub(" *> *", ",", "User4,eta > eta > eta")
#[1] "User4,eta,eta,eta"