[r] Replace all occurrences of a string in a data frame

Here is a dplyr solution

library(dplyr)
library(stringr)

Censor_consistently <-  function(x){
  str_replace(x, '^\\s*([<>])\\s*(\\d+)', '\\1\\2')
}


test_df <- tibble(x = c('0.001', '<0.002', ' < 0.003', ' >  100'),  y = 4:1)

mutate_all(test_df, funs(Censor_consistently))

# A tibble: 4 × 2
x     y
<chr> <chr>
1  0.001     4
2 <0.002     3
3 <0.003     2
4   >100     1