How to convert backslash to slash?

On Wed, 24 Sep 2008, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

  

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.
    

Thank you for your reply. readClipboard is a partial solution to this 
case. More generally, if I want to wrtie a R program in which users are 
asked to input a file path. I want this program to be robust and tolerant, 
that is users can type in C:\Acer or C:/Acer.  What's the way to do this?