Move information to new column if the first value of the cell is a four-digit number

Question

I have a column with addresses. The data is not clean and the information includes street and house number or sometimes postcode and city. I would like to move the postcode and city information to another column with R, while street and house number stay in the old place. The postcode is a 4 digit number string. I am grateful for any suggestion for a solution.

Table right now

Desired outcome

Edit your post to add some sample data and you will likely get faster help. Look into dput() to paste your data structure — jpsmith, Jan 07 '22 at 11:42
Welcome to SO! Would you mind providing [a minimal reproducible example](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5963269/how-to-make-a-great-r-reproducible-example) including a snippet of your data or some fake data and the code you tried. Please do not post an image of code/data/errors [for these reasons](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/285551/why-not-upload-images-of-code-errors-when-asking-a-question/285557#285557). — stefan, Jan 07 '22 at 11:56

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 07 '22 at 12:52

An ifelse with grepl should help -

library(dplyr)

df <- df %>%
  mutate(Strasse = ifelse(grepl('^\\d{4}', Halter), '', Halter), 
         Ort = ifelse(Strasse == '', Halter, ''))

#  Line          Halter     Strasse             Ort
#1    1        1007 Abc                    1007 Abc
#2    2 1012 Long words             1012 Long words
#3    3     Enelbach 54 Enelbach 54                
#4    4         Abcd 56     Abcd 56                
#5    5      Engasse 21  Engasse 21

grepl('^\\d{4}', Halter) returns TRUE if it finds a 4-digit number at the start of the string else returns FALSE.

data

It is easier to help if you provide data in a reproducible format

df <- data.frame(Line = 1:5, 
                 Halter = c('1007 Abc', '1012 Long words', 'Enelbach 54', 
                            'Abcd 56', 'Engasse 21'))

This solution worked perfectly for me, thanks a lot for your help! — Elena, Jan 11 '22 at 13:51
@Elena If the answer helped feel free to accept the answer by clicking on check mark to the left. You can accept only one answer per post. Refer - https://stackoverflow.com/help/someone-answers — Ronak Shah, Jan 13 '22 at 01:32

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 07 '22 at 13:57

In addition to the neat solution of @Ronak Shah, if you want to use base R

df <- data.frame(Line = 1:5, 
                 Halter = c('1007 Abc', '1012 Long words', 'Enelbach 54', 
                            'Abcd 56', 'Engasse 21'))
df$Strasse <- with(df, ifelse(grepl('^\\d{4}', Halter), '', Halter))
df$Ort <- with(df, ifelse(Strasse == '', Halter, ''))

> head(df)
  Line          Halter     Strasse             Ort
1    1        1007 Abc                    1007 Abc
2    2 1012 Long words             1012 Long words
3    3     Enelbach 54 Enelbach 54                
4    4         Abcd 56     Abcd 56                
5    5      Engasse 21  Engasse 21

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 07 '22 at 17:07

An option is also with separate

library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
df %>% 
  separate(Halter, into = c("Strasse", "Ort"), sep = "(?<=[0-9])$|^(?=[0-9]{4} )")
  Line     Strasse             Ort
1    1                    1007 Abc
2    2             1012 Long words
3    3 Enelbach 54                
4    4     Abcd 56                
5    5  Engasse 21

data

df <- structure(list(Line = 1:5, Halter = c("1007 Abc", "1012 Long words", 
"Enelbach 54", "Abcd 56", "Engasse 21")), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, 
-5L))

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 08 '22 at 19:35

Suisse postal codes are made up of 4 digits:

library(dplyr)
library(stringr)
df %>% 
  mutate(Strasse = str_extract(Halter, '\\d{4}\\s.+'))

  Line          Halter         Strasse
1    1        1007 Abc        1007 Abc
2    2 1012 Long words 1012 Long words
3    3     Enelbach 54            <NA>
4    4         Abcd 56            <NA>
5    5      Engasse 21            <NA>

Move information to new column if the first value of the cell is a four-digit number

4 Answers4

data