How to escape backslashes in R string

Question

I\'m writing strings which contain backslashes (\\) to a file:

x1 = "\\\\str"

x2 = "\\\\\\str"
# Error: \'\\s\' is an unreco         


        

Answer 1

Note that the doubling of backslashes is because you are entering the string at the command line and the string is first parsed by the R parser. You can enter strings in different ways, some of which don't need the doubling. For example:

> tmp <- scan(what='')
1: \\\\\str
2: 
Read 1 item
> print(tmp)
[1] "\\\\\\\\\\str"
> cat(tmp, '\n')
\\\\\str 
>