[R] Reanding a windows file

Peter Dalgaard p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk
Mon Feb 20 23:33:49 CET 2006


"Alexandra R. M. de Almeida" <alexandrarma at yahoo.com.br> writes:

> Dear R users
>  
>  Some one knows how to read a windows file with the adress like 
"D:\CSV\Work\test.csv" without change the "\" by "/" by myself?!
>  There is some function or parameter that read like the adress windows form.
>  I tried to search somethig to substitute the "\" by "/", but I don't find...

Well, there's no problem with the backslashed form except if you try
copying it literally into R source code. If you do, you run into
problems with R interpreting the backslash as an escape character,
which itself needs to be escaped ("doubling the backslashes"). You
might for instance proceed as follows:

> x <- readLines(,1) # input data on next line
D:\CSV\Work\test.csv
> x
[1] "D:\\CSV\\Work\\test.csv"
> mydata <- read.csv(x)

Notice that x as such has only single backslashes, it is just the
print routine that inserts escape characters:

> cat(x,"\n")
D:\CSV\Work\test.csv
> nchar(x)
[1] 20

123456789*123456789*




-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark          Ph:  (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)                  FAX: (+45) 35327907




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