? backslash was Re: [R] Editor alternative

[Duncan Murdoch]

>> In that case you don't need to double the backslash.  If you're
>> reading character data from a file, R won't treat the backslashes as
>> escape characters.  It's only the parser that does that.
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>
>I'm not sure I understand what you mean in your last phrase.

If you're reading data using scan() or read.table() (or whatever
low-level functions those use), then you don't need to double the
backslash in the datafile.  This means it's easy to read in a long
list of pathnames from a file.

On the other hand, if the backslash appears in R code (which you type
at the command line, or use source() to read), then it passes through
the parser, and the backslash is treated as an escape character.

Duncan Murdoch
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