title: How to count number of characters(including spaces) before the third column in unstructured data?
body: <p>I have unstructured data that look like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>x &lt;- c("24-March-2017     text1       874874455221112  Text text text10",  
  "25-March-2017         text2       54654656TEXT      Text text 11", 
  "24-March-2017    text3         874874455221112 Text text text 12") 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I would like to count number of characters including spaces before the 3rd column. For example in the first line I would like to count everthying before the number 874874455221112. </p>