[R] gsub: replacing slashes in a string

[Joe Ceradini]

Wow. Thanks David and Rui. I thought I needed to "escape" the replacement
slash as well, which is why I had "//" rather than "/". I swear I had tried
all the slash combos, but missed the obvious one. Much easier than I made
it out to be.

Thanks!
Joe

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 10:59 AM, David L Carlson <dcarlson at tamu.edu> wrote:

> Is this what you want?
>
> > (test2 <- gsub("\\", "/", test, fixed = TRUE))
> [1] "8/24/2016" "8/24/2016" "6/16/2016" "6/16/2016"
> > nchar(test2)
> [1] 9 9 9 9
> > write.csv(test2)
> "","x"
> "1","8/24/2016"
> "2","8/24/2016"
> "3","6/16/2016"
> "4","6/16/2016"
>
> -------------------------------------
> David L Carlson
> Department of Anthropology
> Texas A&M University
> College Station, TX 77840-4352
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: R-help [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Joe
> Ceradini
> Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 11:25 AM
> To: Zilefac
> Subject: [R] gsub: replacing slashes in a string
>
> Hi all,
>
> There are many R help posts out there dealing with slashes in gsub. I
> understand slashes are "escape characters" and thus need to be treated
> differently, and display differently in R. However, I'm still stuck on
> find-replace problem, and would appreciate any tips. Thanks!
>
> GOAL: replace all "\\" with "/", so when export file to csv all slashes are
> the same.
>
> (test <- c("8/24/2016", "8/24/2016", "6/16/2016", "6\\16\\2016"))
>
> Lengths are all the same, I think (?) because of how R displays/deals with
> slashes. However, when I export this to a csv, e.g., there are still double
> slashes, which is a problem for me.
> nchar(test)
>
> Change direction of slashes - works.
> (test2 <- gsub("\\", "//", test, fixed = TRUE))
>
> Now lengths are now not the same....
> nchar(test2)
>
> Change from double to single - does not work. Is this because it actually
> is a single slash but R is just displaying it as double? Regardless, when I
> export from R the double slashes do appear.
> gsub("////", "//", test2, fixed = TRUE)
> gsub("////", "//", test2)
> gsub("////////", "////", test2, fixed = TRUE)
> gsub("////////", "////", test2)
>
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>
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-- 
Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
Zoology and Physiology Dept.
University of Wyoming
JoeCeradini at gmail.com / 914.707.8506
wyocoopunit.org

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