get values from string using strsplit and/or substring in R -

the below string character, contains information want use , assign variables.

[1] "elev: 82 m lat: 39° 37' 39\" n long: 22° 23' 55\" e".

for example: assign elev variable numeric value equal 82.

how should approach this? need regular expression using strsplit, substring?

here strsplit solution.

the first argument gsub pattern string "(\\w+):" . matches "word" characters "\\w" ensuring there @ least 1 such character "+" match succeeds if word characters followed colon ":".

the second argument gsub replacement string ":\\1:". specifies portion of pattern within parens "(\\w+)" replaced "\\1" followed colon ":". is, prefaces each word ending in : :.

finally strsplit splits on spaces-colon-spaces forming result matrix. code not depend on labels are:

m <- matrix(strsplit(gsub("(\\w+):", ":\\1:", x), " *: *")[[1]][-1], 2) 

giving:

> m      [,1]   [,2]             [,3]             [1,] "elev" "lat"            "long"           [2,] "82 m" "39° 37' 39\" n" "22° 23' 55\" e" 

or alternative form:

v <- as.list(setnames(m[2,], m[1,])) 

giving:

> v $elev [1] "82 m"  $lat [1] "39° 37' 39\" n"  $long [1] "22° 23' 55\" e" 

which can used this:

v$elev