How do I extract the first word from a list of words?

Question

I'm having trouble extracting the first word from a list of words. I've tried substring, gsub, and str_extract but still haven't figured it out. Please advise. Thank you. Here is what I'm trying to do:

Word
"c("print", "printing", "prints")"
"c("take", "takes", "taking")"
"c("score", "scoring", "scored")"

I'm trying to extract the first word from the list that looks like this:

Extracted
print
take
score

Is Word the column of a dataframe? and each vector refers to a list? — Henry Cyranka, Jan 24 '19 at 17:07
Are you showing us literal text, a list of text vectors, or something else? — Tim Biegeleisen, Jan 24 '19 at 17:07
yes, Word is the name of the column. I converted it into a data frame. — cheklapkok, Jan 24 '19 at 17:09
Please share a `dput()` of your data so it's clear exactly what your input is. What you've shared now is not valid R input. — MrFlick, Jan 24 '19 at 17:13

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 24 '19 at 17:15

You can just use purrr::map with an index argument as follows:

If you want your output returned as a list:

  > purrr::map(Word, 1)
  # [[1]]
  # [1] "print"
  #
  # [[2]]
  # [1] "take"
  #
  # [[3]]
  # [1] "score"

If you want it returned as a vector:

  > purrr::map_chr(Word, 1)
  # [1] "print" "take"  "score"

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 24 '19 at 17:55

0

Using base R alone

##Just to recreate the data
df <- tibble(
  Word= list(c("print", "printing", "prints"),c("take", "takes", "taking"),c("score", "scoring", "scored")))

###
df$Extracted <- sapply(1:length(df$Word), function(i)df$Word[[i]][1])

edited Jan 24 '19 at 17:55

akrun

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answered Jan 24 '19 at 17:11

Henry Cyranka

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Thank you. I have a much longer list of words but this approach actually solved the issue I was facing. – cheklapkok Jan 24 '19 at 17:21

How do I extract the first word from a list of words?

2 Answers2