Splitting strings into multiple fixed width columns

Question

I am trying to use str_split to split the following observations into a specific format.

"00010943900008" "00010946803119" "00010946803219" "00010946803219" "00010946803219" "00010948700007"

I am trying to split it into different columns.

So that the first observation will look something like the following:

Column x = 00

Column y = 01

Column z = 09439

Column w = 00008

Where column x will always be the first 2 numbers in the observation, column y will be the next 2 numbers, column z will be the next 5 numbers and column w will be the final 5 numbers

Data

string <- c("00010943900008", "00010946803119", "00010946803219", "00010946803219", 
"00010946803219", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", 
"00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", 
"00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", 
"00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", 
"00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", 
"00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", 
"00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", 
"00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00010948700007", 
"00010948700007", "00010948700007", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", 
"00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016", "00011820000016"
)

Answer 1

You can either concatenate your data with \n as a separator or write it to file, then use readr::read_fwf or read.fwf (from file only) to import it as a fixed width format. Here's the readr::read_fwf version without writing to disk:

library(readr)
result = read_fwf(paste(string, collapse = "\n"),
                  col_positions = fwf_widths(c(2, 2, 5, 5), col_names = c("x", "y", "z", "w")))
head(result)
# # A tibble: 6 x 4
#   x     y     z     w
#   <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
# 1 00    01    09439 00008
# 2 00    01    09468 03119
# 3 00    01    09468 03219
# 4 00    01    09468 03219
# 5 00    01    09468 03219
# 6 00    01    09487 00007