Naming the rows in a matrix in R

Question

I am trying to name the rows in a matrix, but it adds the prefixes 'X.', 'X..' etc. in front of these names. Also, the row names don't come out properly. For example, the first-row name is supposed to be 'e subscript (t+1)' but it shows something else. The even-numbered row names should be vacant, but they are given names. Could you help please?

Please see the dataset here.

Below is the code I used:

rownames(table2a)=paste(c("$e_t+1$"," ","$r_t+1$", " ","$\\Delta y_{n,t+1}$"," ",
                    "$s_{n,t+1}$"," ", "$d_t+1-p_t+1$"," ", "$rb_t+1$"," "))

Included libraries: matrix, dplyr, tidyverse, xtable.

Below is the data from dput(table2a):

structure(c(-0.011918875562309, 0.0493186644094629, 0.00943711646402318, 
0.0084043692395113, 0.0140061617086464, 0.00795790133389348, 
-0.00372516684283399, 0.00631517247007723, 0.00514156266584497, 
0.0039339752041611, 0.0148362913561212, 0.00793003246354337, 
-0.0807656037164587, 0.0599852917766847, 0.991792361285981, 0.0102220639400435, 
-0.00608828061911691, 0.00967903407684488, 0.010343002117867, 
0.00768101625973846, 0.0578541455030235, 0.00478481429473926, 
-0.00902328873121743, 0.00964513773477125, -0.799680080407018, 
0.340494864072598, 0.0519648273240202, 0.0580235615884655, 0.0850517813830584, 
0.0549411579861702, -0.0665428760388874, 0.0435997977143392, 
-0.032698572959578, 0.027160069487786, 0.114163705951583, 0.0547487519805466, 
0.352025366916776, 0.197746547959218, 0.0476825327079758, 0.0336978915546042, 
0.0464511908714403, 0.0319077480426568, 0.904849333951824, 0.0253211146465119, 
0.132904050913606, 0.0157735418364402, 0.0653710645280691, 0.0317960059066269, 
0.939695537568421, 0.612311426298072, -0.0578948128653228, 0.104343687684969, 
-0.0744692071400603, 0.0988006057025484, 0.121089017775182, 0.0784054537723728, 
0.0345069733304992, 0.048841914052704, -0.090885199308955, 0.0984546022582597, 
-0.280821673428002, 0.248826811381596, -0.0288068135696716, 0.0424024540117092, 
-0.0239685609446809, 0.0401498953370305, 0.00219488911775388, 
0.0318618569231297, 0.066433933135983, 0.0198480335553826, 0.871940074366622, 
0.0400092888905855), .Dim = c(12L, 6L), .Dimnames = list(c("$e_t+1$", 
" ", "$r_t+1$", " ", "$\\Delta y_{n,t+1}$", " ", "$s_{n,t+1}$", 
" ", "$d_t+1-p_t+1$", " ", "$rb_t+1$", " "), c("ex_stock_ret_100.l1", 
"real_int_100.l1", "Chg_1month.l1", "spreads.l1", "log_dp.l1", 
"rb_rate_100.l1")))

My desired output (row & column names) is as shown in this picture enter image description here

Answer 1

you can remove the first X and all following dots (no matter how many there are) with the gsub command:

rownames(table2a) <- gsub("^X\\.*","",rownames(table2a))

^ = beginning of the string; X = your actual X; \\. = a dot; * = 0 or more of the before mentioned (in this case \\.); so in total ^X\\. means: if you find X as the first letter and all possible dots following directly behind it.

gsub replaces this find with "", meaning nothing, leaving only whatever comes after

EDIT: to also get rid of every 2nd rowname, add a little something extra:

rownames(table2a) <- gsub("^X\\.*[1-9]*","",rownames(table2a))

which gets rid of any number directly behind the dots. This should leave those rows empty.

Answer 2

In case you want to remove that prefix, you can do the following:

rownames(table2a) <- substring(rownames(table2a), 2)