stringr split column by alpha and numeric - regex

Question

I can only use stringer/ regular expression, I am working in r
I have a csv I have downloaded called mpg2,and a subset of this containing only Mercedes Benz makes. What I am trying to do is split the model into alpha and numeric so I can plot them. for example, a mercedes C300 would need to be split into C and 300, or GLS500 into GLS and 550.
so now I have all of the model numbers, now I want to split between letters and numbers.
I have tried
mercedes<- subset(mpg2, make=="Mercedes-Benz")
str_split(mercedes$model, "[0:9]")
but this doesn't do what I want it to and I have played with n= and that doesn't work either.
then I have
MB$modelnumber<-as.numeric(gsub("([0-9]+).*$", "\\1", mercedes$model))
Which makes a column of only numbers, I can't get the letters to work.
If I need to upload my specific dataset let me know, I just have to figure out how to do that.
But I need to basically split "XYZ123" into its alpha and numeric parts and put them in 2 separate columns.

Answer 1

something like this :
x <- "XYZ123"
x <- gsub("([0-9]+)",",\\1",x)
strsplit(x,",")
i ve replaced the original group of numbers by ,group of numbers. so that i can do a split on ot easily.

Answer 2

You can use something like this:
SplitMe <- function(string, alphaFirst = TRUE) {
Pattern <- ifelse(isTRUE(alphaFirst), "(?<=[a-zA-Z])(?=[0-9])", "(?<=[0-9])(?=[a-zA-Z])")
strsplit(string, split = Pattern, perl = T)
}
String <- c("C300", "GLS500", "XYZ123")
SplitMe(String)
# [[1]]
# [1] "C" "300"
#
# [[2]]
# [1] "GLS" "500"
#
# [[3]]
# [1] "XYZ" "123"
To get the output as a two column matrix, just use do.call(rbind, ...):
do.call(rbind, SplitMe(String))
# [,1] [,2]
# [1,] "C" "300"
# [2,] "GLS" "500"
# [3,] "XYZ" "123"
The above is just a convenience function that I have saved for the following scenarios:
strsplit(String, split = "(?<=[a-zA-Z])(?=[0-9])", perl = T)
and
strsplit(String, split = "(?<=[0-9])(?=[a-zA-Z])", perl = T)
This function won't change a GLS500 into a GLS550 though.