Remove special characters using gsub

Question

How can someone remove this expressions – ( in gsub

Command:

gsub("– (", "", df$Names)

Error:

Error: '\(' is an unrecognized escape in character string starting ""\("

Answer 1

You need to escape the parenthesis character ( with a double backslash - one for gsub and one for R:

gsub("– \\(", "", df$Names)