This is one of the solutions.
out <- with(dat, strsplit(as.character(interest_string), "\\{"))
## or
# out <- with(dat, strsplit(as.character(interest_string), "{", fixed = TRUE))
out <- cbind.data.frame(id = rep(dat$id, times = sapply(out, length)),
interest = unlist(out, use.names = FALSE))
Donation:
R> out
id interest
1 1 YI
2 1 Z0
3 1 ZI
4 2 ZO
5 3 <NA>
6 4 ZT
Explanation
interest_string dat, \\{ . , R \. ( , fixed = TRUE strsplit.) - ,
R> out
[[1]]
[1] "YI" "Z0" "ZI"
[[2]]
[1] "ZO"
[[3]]
[1] "<NA>"
[[4]]
[1] "ZT"
, , . , , id, out, .
, ( , ) id, , strsplit (out). , , , . , id , strsplit.