Hand ling and processing text strings in R? Wait a second... you exclaim, R is not a scripting language like Perl, Python, or Ruby. Why would you want to use R for handling and processing text? Well, because sooner or later (I would say sooner than later) you will have to deal with some kind of string manipulation for your data analysis. So it’s better to be prepared for such tasks and know how to perform them inside the R environment.

I’m sure there will be people telling you that the fact that you can do something in R does not mean that you should do it. And I agree (to some extent). Yes, you probably shouldn’t use R for those tasks that can be better performed with languages like Python, Perl or Ruby. However, there will be many occasions in which it’s better to stay inside the R environment (even if it is just for convenient reasons or for procrastination within R). I may definitely use Python if I have to, but whenever possible, I will try to stay with R (my personal taste).