Ignore escape characters (backslashes) in R strings

string r escaping spss
mhermans picture mhermans · Jan 13, 2011 · Viewed 22.4k times · Source

While running an R-plugin in SPSS, I receive a Windows path string as input e.g.

'C:\Users\mhermans\somefile.csv'

I would like to use that path in subsequent R code, but then the slashes need to be replaced with forward slashes, otherwise R interprets it as escapes (eg. "\U used without hex digits" errors).

I have however not been able to find a function that can replace the backslashes with foward slashes or double escape them. All those functions assume those characters are escaped.

So, is there something along the lines of:

>gsub('\\', '/', 'C:\Users\mhermans')
C:/Users/mhermans

Answer

Sacha Epskamp picture Sacha Epskamp · Jan 13, 2011

You can try to use the 'allowEscapes' argument in scan()

X=scan(what="character",allowEscapes=F)
C:\Users\mhermans\somefile.csv

print(X)
[1] "C:\\Users\\mhermans\\somefile.csv"

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