[R] How do I paste double quotes arround a character string?

[(Ted Harding)]

Hi Philip,
I think a bit more clarification may be useful yet!

1: How are you sending the command from R to Linux?
2: What is the command intended to be (as seen by Linux)?
   And from what source (quasi-command line; script file; ...)
   would it be read by Linux?

For example, on my Linux machine, I just did (in a shell
command line):

ted at deb:~$ touch "New Mexico"
ted at deb:~$ ls -l "New Mexico"
-rw-r--r-- 1 ted ted 0 2008-07-03 10:58 New Mexico

and then, in R, I did:

> system("ls -l \"New Mexico\"")
-rw-r--r-- 1 ted ted 0 2008-07-03 10:58 New Mexico

so I don't seem to have had the problem you describe below.

On the other hand, back in Linux, if I do:

ted at deb:~$ ls -l \"New Mexico\"
ls: "New: No such file or directory
ls: Mexico": No such file or directory

which looks like the problem you describe -- so clearly the
command did not get through in that form from R using the
command system("ls -l \"New Mexico\"").

Best wishes,
Ted.

On 03-Jul-08 09:18:14, Philip James Smith wrote:
> Thanks for your reply, Ted... I am very grateful for it.
> 
> Using your notation, what I need is a character string Y that looks
> like:
> 
>  >
>  > Y
>  >[1] ""New Mexico""
> 
> rather than
> 
>  > Y
>  >[1] "\"New Mexico\""
> 
> i.e., Y must have the string 'New Mexico' surrounded by double quotes, 
> rather than double quotes preceded by slashes.
> 
> The reason why I need it that way is that I've over simplified my 
> request and the character string is actually a unix command that needs 
> to be surrounded by double quotes when embeded in the unix (linux) 
> executes it. When unix sees that slash before the quotes, it gives an
> error.
> 
> I'd be grateful if you can provide a solution to this!!
> 
> Thank you, Ted!
> 
> Gratefully,
> Phil Smith
> Duluth, GA
> 
> 
> (Ted Harding) wrote:
>> On 03-Jul-08 01:25:55, Philip James Smith wrote:
>>   
>>> Hi R Community:
>>> I've got a character string that looks like: New Mexico
>>>
>>> How to I create the new character string that looks like: "New
>>> Mexico" 
>>> That is, it is the original string (New Mexico)  with double quotes 
>>> infront and behind it?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Phil Smith
>>>     
>>
>> I tried the following. Is that the sort of thing you want to achieve?
>>
>>   X<-"New Mexico"
>>   Y<-"\"New Mexico\""
>>   X
>> # [1] "New Mexico"
>>   Y
>> # [1] "\"New Mexico\""
>>   plot((1:10),xlab=X,ylab=Y)
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Ted.
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>> E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
>> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
>> Date: 03-Jul-08                                       Time: 09:22:10
>> ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
>>
>>
> 
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 03-Jul-08                                       Time: 11:08:36
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