I have a vector of strings
ids <- c("NM_006690.2_PROBE1","333212.1_PROBE1","7602049CB1_PROBE1","NM_018065.1_PROBE1","1539036CB1_PROBE1","NM_021019.1_PROBE1","1440608CB1_PROBE1","NM_031270.1_PROBE1","613678CB1_PROBE1")
A lot of discussing is already here: extract a substring in R according to a pattern.
I want to remove everything after a dot(.) and  want to remove all after _ before PROBE. i managed to remove . by 
read.table(text = ids, sep = ".", as.is = TRUE, fill=TRUE)$V1
I now mind to remove the  _ before PROBE  in cases like 613678CB1_PROBE1 and the output i want is 613678CB1  . How to do it.
Output:
"NM_006690", "333212"  , "7602049CB1"  "NM_018065","1539036CB1"  "NM_021019" "1440608CB1"  "NM_031270","613678CB1")
Note: There are two _'s one attached with NM and other with PROBE. I want the one every thing to be removed  _PROBE
 
     
     
    