How to split a url

Question

I want to split the below string in R

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797998

Here I want to split the URL and only want to get the value as 797998.<

Answer 1

I'd recommend the url suggestion above, however if it's stored as a string then a couple of options are:

str <- "https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797998"

# If you know it will follow the only '=' in the string
(num <- unlist(strsplit(str, "="))[2])

# If you know that the number is always the last 6 digits
(num <- substr(str, nchar(str)-5, nchar(str)))

# If you know the number always follows the last '=' sign
revstr <- rev(unlist(strsplit(str, NULL)))
index <- which(revstr == "=")
revnum <- revstr[1:(index-1)]
(num <- paste(rev(revnum), collapse = ""))

Note, you'd have to convert these to numeric, using as.numeric(), if you wanted a number. Otherwise, they are currently given as character strings.