[R] Backslash \ in string

[Erik Iverson]

On 07/15/2010 08:02 AM, Jannis wrote:
> Dear R community,
>
>
> is there any way to include a backslash in a charakter string without meaning some escape sequence?
>
> E.g. i need a string like:
>
> a<- '\hline'
> Error: '\h' is an unrecognized escape in character string starting "\h"
>
> to include some latex code in a xtable object, but I only mange to do:
>
> a<- '\\hline'
>
> which is not what I want.


Why don't you want that?  I use something like that every day with LaTeX and it 
works fine, so I'm not sure what you mean.  I don't use xtable though, so I 
can't speak to that.  But can you explain what happens in the resulting .tex 
file when you use '\\'.  Escaping each backslash you want in your .tex file with 
another should be the way to go, e.g., the table end of line would be written 
"\\\\" in R.

>
> In detail I would like to add the following line of code to the first row of an xtable object with the add.to.row argument:
>
>
> &  \multicolumn{4}{c}{A} \multicolumn{4}{c}{B} \\
>
> for which I have to convert it into a character sting.