Splitting string by delimiter in R [duplicate]

Question

I have the following string

x <- "b|all|the|experts|admit|that|we|should|legalise|drugs|b|war|in|south|osetia|pictures|made|by|a|russian|soldier|b|swedish|wrestler|ara|abrahamian|throws|away|medal|in|olympic|hissy|fit|b|russia|exaggerated|the|death|toll|in|south|ossetia|now|only|were|originally|killed|compared|to|b|missile|that|killed|inside|pakistan|may|have|been|launched|by|the|cia|b|rushdie|condemns|random|house|s|refusal|to|publish|novel|for|fear|of|muslim|retaliation|b|poland|and|us|agree|to|missle|defense|deal|interesting|timing|b|will|the|russians|conquer|tblisi|bet|on|it|no|seriously|you|can|bet|on|it|b|russia|exaggerating|south|ossetian|death|toll|says|human|rights|group|b|musharraf|expected|to|resign|rather|than|face|impeachment|b|moscow|made|plans|months|ago|to|invade|georgia|b|why|russias|response|to|georgia|was|right|b|nigeria|has|handed|over|the|potentially|oil|rich|bakassi|peninsula|to|cameroon|b|the|us|and|poland|have|agreed|a|preliminary|deal|on|plans|for|the|controversial|us|defence|shield"

When I try to split this using

> strsplit(x,"|")
[[1]]
  [1] "b" "|" "a" "l" "l" "|" "t" "h" "e" "|" "e" "x" "p" "e" "r" "t" "s" "|" "a" "d" "m" "i" "t" "|" "t" "h" "a" "t" "|"
 [30] "w" "e" "|" "s" "h" "o" "u" "l" "d" "|" "l" "e" "g" "a" "l" "i" "s" "e" "|" "d" "r" "u" "g" "s" "|" "b" "|" "w" "a"
 [59] "r" "|" "i" "n" "|" "s" "o" "u" "t" "h" "|" "o" "s" "e" "t" "i" "a" "|" "p" "i" "c" "t" "u" "r" "e" "s" "|" "m" "a"
 [88] "d" "e" "|" "b" "y" "|" "a" "|" "r" "u" "s" "s" "i" "a" "n" "|" "s" "o" "l" "d" "i" "e" "r" "|" "b" "|" "s" "w" "e"
[117] "d" "i" "s" "h" "|" "w" "r" "e" "s" "t" "l" "e" "r" "|" "a" "r" "a" "|" "a" "b" "r" "a" "h" "a" "m" "i" "a" "n" "|"
[146] "t" "h" "r" "o" "w" "s" "|" "a" "w" "a" "y" "|" "m" "e" "d" "a" "l" "|" "i" "n" "|" "o" "l" "y" "m" "p" "i" "c" "|"
[175] "h" "i" "s" "s" "y" "|" "f" "i" "t" "|" "b" "|" "r" "u" "s" "s" "i" 
.........

However I want the words seperated by the delimiter |. Where am I going wrong?

Answer 1

This character that you are using has special meaning in regular expressions - it means OR. So your split pattern is like this:

empty string OR empty string == empty string

and that's why your input string is splitted char by char. To use this as normal character without special regular expression meaning you have to escape it, like this:

strsplit(x, "\\|")