[R] How to convert backslash to slash?

[Duncan Murdoch]

Shengqiao Li wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Sep 2008, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>
>   
>> On 23/09/2008 4:00 PM, Shengqiao Li wrote:
>>     
>>> How to use sub, gsub, etc. to replace "\" in a string to "/"?
>>>
>>> For example,convert "C:\foo\bar" to "C:/foo/bar".
>>>       
>> If those are R strings, there are no backslashes in the first one.  It has a 
>> formfeed and a backspace in it.
>>     
>
> I did notice that this string  was special. It's a legimate R string. If 
> "f" and "b" are replaced by "d", it will not. 

I didn't say it was not legitimate, I said that it contains no 
backslashes.  If you replace f or b with d, you do not have a legitimate 
string.
> My purpose is to convert a 
> Windows file path (eg. copied from Explorer location bar) to a R file path 
> through some R function inside R terminal. The "File->Change dir..." takes 
> a file path like "C:\Acer", but setwd function will fail.  

That's not true.  If you enter a backslash in the string, setwd() works 
fine.

Your problem is that you are confusing R source code with the strings 
that it represents.  The R source code for the file path C:\Acer is 
"C:\\Acer".  The
R source code "C:\foo\bar" contains no backslashes, it contains the 
characters C, :, formfeed, o, o,  backspace, a, r.

If you have the string C:\Acer in the Windows clipboard, then you can 
read it from there using readClipboard().  (There are many other ways to 
read the clipboard as well;
using 'clipboard' as a filename generally works.) You can then pass it 
to setwd(), and it will be fine.

Duncan Murdoch
> I guess there 
> must be some ways in R to replace a backslash by slash, eg. C:\Acer -> 
> C:/Acer. The first problem may be how to pass and save this kind of 
> strings. encodeString does not work for this, it will just ignore "\".
>   
> Shengqiao Li
>
>   
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>>     
>
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