x <- "Red => Orange => Yellow blue => Grey,black" paste0("[ ", paste(strsplit(x, " => ", fixed=TRUE)[[1]], collapse=" ] => [ "), " ]") paste0("[ ", gsub("\\s*=>\\s*", " ] => [ ", x), " ]")
Standard input is empty
[1] "[ Red ] => [ Orange ] => [ Yellow blue ] => [ Grey,black ]" [1] "[ Red ] => [ Orange ] => [ Yellow blue ] => [ Grey,black ]"