Extract only number between commas

Question

I have a returned string like this from my code: (<C1>, 4.297, %) And I am trying to extract only the value 4.297 from this string using gsub command:

Fat<-gsub("\\D", "", stringV)

However, this extracts not only 4.297 but also the number '1' in C1. Is there a way to extract only 4.297 from this string, please can you help.

Thanks

Answer 1

How about this?

# Your sample character string
ss <- "(<C1>, 4.297, %)";

gsub(".+,\\s*(\\d+\\.\\d+),.+", "\\1", ss)
#[1] "4.297"

or

gsub(".+,\\s*([0-9\\.]+),.+", "\\1", ss)

Convert to numeric with as.numeric if necessary.