R remove (NA) from a string

Question

I have

"this is an example (NA)"

and would like to have "this is an example"

gsub("(NA)", "", "this is an example (NA)")

does not work.

I have tried gsub

gsub("(NA)", "", "this is an example (NA)")
[1] "this is an example ()"

Answer 1

You can try:

"this is an example (NA)" -> x
gsub('\\(NA)', '', x)

Answer 2

Another possible solution, based on stringr :

library(stringr)

string <- "this is an example (NA)"
str_remove_all(string, "\\s*\\(NA\\)\\s*")

#> [1] "this is an example"

Answer 3

You should enable fixed = TRUE

> gsub("(NA)", "", "this is an example (NA)", fixed = TRUE)
[1] "this is an example "

Answer 4

string <- "this is an example (NA)"

gsub(' \\(NA\\)', '', string)

[1] "this is an example"