Removing first alphabetic character from string

Question

I have a column that contains alphanumeric data. I would like to remove the alphabetic character only if it's in the beginning of the string.

Example of what the data looks like: Z999999999 12ABC 123456AB7

What I would like the data to look like: 999999999 12ABC 123456AB7

What have you tried and where have you run into problems? Do the bolded letters need to be retained as bold? Where do you expect the output to be? — Ron Rosenfeld, Jul 31 '19 at 00:26
What if there are two alphabetic characters at the start of the string? Do you remove both or only the first one? — Ronak Shah, Jul 31 '19 at 01:24

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 31 '19 at 12:43

3

You need to use regular expression:

sub(pattern = "^[a-zA-Z]",replacement = "",x = "Z999999999 12ABC 123456AB7")

Read:

edited Jul 31 '19 at 12:43

Wiktor Stribiżew

answered Jul 30 '19 at 22:16

yusuzech

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 30 '19 at 22:54

2

library(stringr)
x <- 'Z999999999 12ABC 123456AB7'
str_replace(x, '^[a-zA-Z]','') # find a leading letter and replace it with nothing

answered Jul 30 '19 at 22:54

Tony Ladson

2 Answers2