..Some More Regex Examples Added to Collection

Find the below examples added to my list of regex-examples HERE.
ps: just found THIS very informative presentation on regex.

str <- c("i.e., George W. Bush", "Lyndon B. Johnson, etc.")
gsub("([A-Z])[.]?", "\\1", str)
# this will find abbreviated names and remove the fullstops:
# the uppercase letters followed by a full-stop are matched by
# [A-Z][.]? = repeated at most once. the parentheses delineate a
# back reference, i.e. the uppercase letter, which will be
# replaced by \\1 which is the first backreference.

# output:
[1] "i.e., George W Bush"    "Lyndon B Johnson, etc."

str <- c("George W. Bush", "Lyndon B. Johnson")
sub(" .*", "", str)
# keeps the first word and removes the rest.
# matches and replaces the substring comprised of the first
# white space followed by any single character,
# designated by the period, repeated zero or more times, as
# given by the asterisk.

# output:
[1] "George" "Lyndon"

sub("\\s\\w+$", "", str)
# removes the last word plus the preceding space in a string.
# looks for a space followed by any word which is the last one:
# the dollar sign $ is a meta-character that matches the
# beginning and end of a line.

# output:
[1] "George W." "Lyndon B."

sub(".*\\s(\\w+$)", "\\1", str)
# keep only the last word of a string.
# looks for anything, repeated arbitrarily often followed by a
# space ".*\\" and a word which is the last in line.
# for this word you put brackets for a back-reference, which is
# returned by "\\1", the 1st back-reference.

# output:
[1] "Bush"    "Johnson"

str <- c("&George W. Bush", "Lyndon B. Johnson?")
gsub("[^[:alnum:][:space:].]", "", str)
# keep alphanumeric signs AND full-stop, remove anything else,
# that is, all other punctuation. what should not be matched is
# designated by the caret.

# output:
[1] "George W. Bush"    "Lyndon B. Johnson"