Escaping the slash in r does not work

Question

I have read that if you want to insert a backslash in a string you need to escape it:

a <- "\\"

The problem is that if I do that I get two slashes in my string!

> a <- "\\"
> a
[1] "\\"

How can I get just one single backslash in my string?

The output of `print` is not the same as the actual thing. – Joshua Ulrich Oct 13 '14 at 14:20 — Joshua Ulrich, Oct 13 '14 at 14:20

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 13 '14 at 14:19

6

You don't actually get two backslashes--that's actually a single character :-)

Test it out:

a <- "\\"
nchar(a)
# [1] 1
cat(a)
# \

answered Oct 13 '14 at 14:19

1 Answers1