Remove punctuation from text (except the symbol &)

Question

I need to remove punctuation from the text:

 data <- "Type the command AT&W enter. in order to save the new protocol on modem;"
 gsub('[[:punct:] ]+',' ',data)

This solution gives the result

[1] "Type the command AT W enter in order to save the new protocol on modem "

This is not the desired result because I would like to save &, hence:

[1] "Type the command AT&W enter in order to save the new protocol on modem "

Answer 1

You could try a user defined regex consisting of anything that is not an $ or an alpha numeric:

data <- "Type the command AT&W enter. in order to save the new protocol on modem;"

gsub('[^&[:alnum:] ]+',' ',data)