Find and replace without backsearching

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R novice here with what is probably a silly/ simple question.

I am trying to use R to find and replace within a vector "census.new" (basically trying to use R to do what excel does with find/ replace). However, because the original data (what I am searching for) overlaps partially with what I am trying to replace, I am ending up with some funky results.

I am trying to replace 2 with 2008b, 3 with 2009a, etc.

census.new<-sub("2","2008b", census.new, fixed=TRUE)
census.new<-sub("3","2009a", census.new, fixed=TRUE)
census.new<-sub("4","2009b", census.new, fixed=TRUE)
census.new<-sub("5","2010a", census.new, fixed=TRUE)
census.new<-sub("8","2011b", census.new, fixed=TRUE)
census.new<-sub("10","2012a", census.new, fixed=TRUE)
census.new<-sub("11","2012b", census.new, fixed=TRUE)
census.new<-sub("12","2013a", census.new, fixed=TRUE)
census.new<-sub("13","2013b", census.new, fixed=TRUE)
table(census.new)

The resulting table is:

2002020202013babbb    2009a     2009b     202013ba00202012bbb    202013ba009a
              6268     3129      3129                    3129            3129

20202013baa         20202013bab      2020202013baaa   2020202013babb
       3129                3129                3129             3129 

Thanks in advance!

asked 2 mins ago

carrie

1

Find and replace without backsearching