R: How can I replace let's say the 5th element within a string?

Question

I would like to convert the a string like be33szfuhm100060 into BESZFUHM0060.

In order to replace the small letters with capital letters I\'ve so far used the gsub f

Answer 1

As an alternative, if you are going to be doing this alot:

String <- function(x="") {
  x <- as.character(paste(x, collapse=""))
  class(x) <- c("String","character")
  return(x)
}

"[.String" <- function(x,i,j,...,drop=TRUE) {
  unlist(strsplit(x,""))[i]
}
"[<-.String" <- function(x,i,j,...,value) {
  tmp <- x[]
  tmp[i] <- String(value)
  x <- String(tmp)
  x
}
print.String <- function(x, ...) cat(x, "\n")
## try it out
> x <- String("be33szfuhm100060")
> x[3:4] <- character(0)
> x
beszfuhm100060