Efficiently convert backslash to forward slash in R
I am looking for an efficient way to convert back slash to forward slash in R. Sometime I copy the link of the directory in Windows and I get something like this:
C:\Users\jd\Documents\folder\file.txt
How can I quickly change this to C:/Users/jd/Documents/folder/file.txt ? I cannot even read the above expression as character. It throws an error
"\u used without hex digits in character string starting ""C:\u".
I know TAB function in R helps to find the location fast, but was just wondering if there was any other work around. I could change the working directory to the location of folder also. I was just playing around and tried to convert backslash to forward slash and was not straight forward so asked this just because of curiosity.
Answer
In R, you've to escape the \ with \\ So, your path should be:
x <- "C:\\Users\\jd\\Documents\\folder\\file.txt"
To get that, you can do:
x <- readline()
then, at the prompt, paste your unmodified path (CTRL+V then ENTER)
Finally, to change \\ to / everywhere, you could use gsub, once again by escaping the \, but twice, as follows:
gsub("\\\\", "/", x)
# [1] "C:/Users/jd/Documents/folder/file.txt"