[Rd] The behaviour of setting names differs between lists and atomic vectors

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 21/08/2014 9:26 AM, Richard Cotton wrote:
> If you set the names in a list, some cat-style processing seems to
> happen.  For example, backslashes are modified.  This behaviour
> doesn't happen with atomic vectors.  Compare, for example:
>
> setNames(1, "a\\b")
> ## a\\b
> ##   1
> setNames(list(1), "a\\b")
> ## $`a\b`
> ## [1] 1
>
> Notice that the name of the element in the list has been changed to
> 'a', 'backspace'.
>
> Is this behaviour intended, or a bug?
>
I think there's a bug, but not in names<- (or setNames, which calls 
it).  The bug is in the printing, as you'll see if you look at
names(setNames(list(1), "a\\b")).

Duncan Murdoch