[R] how to replace a single backward slash with a double backwardslash?

[William Dunlap]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Sean Zhang
> Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2009 2:11 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] how to replace a single backward slash with a 
> double backwardslash?
> 
> Dear R-helpers:
> 
> Hours ago, I asked how to replace a single forward slash with a double
> backward slash and recieved great help. Thanks again for all 
> the repliers.
> 
> In the meantime, I wonder how to replace a single backward 
> slash with a
> double backward slash?
> 
> e.g., I want change "c:\test" into "c:\\test"
> 
> I tried the following but does not work.
> gsub("\\\","\\\\","c:\test")

The input string "c:\test" contains no backslash
character, nor a "t" character.  It contains
   cee
   colon
   tab ("\t")
   ee
   ess
   tee
If you output the string using cat() you will see
the tab action and the missing "t".

"\t" means tab, "\n" newline, "\r" carriage return,
"\52" octal 52 (asterisk in ASCII encoding), "\x2a"
hexadecimal 2a (also asterisk), etc.  ?Syntax may
give all the details.

If you want to change tabs to the 2-character sequences
backslash t, then do
  > gsub("\t", "\\\\t", "c:\test")
  [1] "c:\\test"
  > cat(.Last.value, "\n")
  c:\test

Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com 

> 
> Can someone help?
> 
> Thanks a lot in advance.
> 
> -Sean
> 
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