pasting "\" into character strings
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! My answer is correct, and it does gives you c:\work\part1.txt However, print() (which you have called by auto-printing) escapes the escape characters. cat() does not, so you get
x <- paste("c:", "work", "part1.txt", sep="\\")
x
[1] "c:\\work\\part1.txt"
cat(x, "\n")
c:\work\part1.txt
On Sun, 22 Dec 2002, John Miyamoto wrote:
On Sun, 22 Dec 2002 ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk wrote:
Why guess? It's in the R Language definition and in all good books on
S/R.
`String constants are delimited by a pair of single (') or double (")
quotes and can contain all other printable characters. Quotes and other
special characters within strings are specified using escape sequences:'
paste("c:", "work", "part1.txt", sep="\\")
Reply: The problem with this command is that it produces
paste("c:", "work", "part1.txt", sep="\\")
[1] "c:\\work\\part1.txt"
whereas I want "c:\work\part1.txt". Some people have suggested to try
'file.path', but it either doesn't work, or I don't know how to make it
work.
file.path("c:","work","part1.txt", fsep = "\")
Error: syntax error
file.path("c:","work","part1.txt", fsep = "\\")
[1] "c:\\work\\part1.txt" John Miyamoto
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595