R find string in file that starts with "***"

Question

I have a file that contains a specific line that begins with "***" How can I find the line with this string since it begins with wild cards?

I would normally use

Line_n <- grep("*** The Maximum 1hour", readLines(con=filename))

Thanks!

Hi, you can use double backlashes to escape special characters in R. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27721008/how-do-i-deal-with-special-characters-like-in-my-regex — csmontt, Jun 24 '20 at 13:32

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 24 '20 at 13:38

s <- c("** The Maximum 1hour", "*** The Maximum 1hour", 
       "*** The Maximum 2hours", "The Maximum 1hour", 
       "*** The Maximum 1hour", "+++ The Maximum 1hour",
       "dummy *** The Maximum 1hour")

grep("^[*]{3} The Maximum 1hour", s)
[1] 2 5

finds strings with exactly 3 asterisks at the beginning of the string (but only then).

R find string in file that starts with "***"

1 Answers1