How to replace a symbol by a backslash in R?

Question

Could you help me to replace a char by a backslash in R? My trial:

gsub(\"D\",\"\\\\\",\"1D2\")

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

When inputting backslashes from the keyboard, always escape them:

gsub("D","\\\\","1D2")
#[1] "1\\2"

or,

gsub("D","\\","1D2", fixed=TRUE)
#[1] "1\\2"

or,

library(stringr)
str_replace("1D2","D","\\\\")
#[1] "1\\2"

Note: If you want something like "1\2" as output, I'm afraid you can't do that in R (at least in my knowledge). You can use forward slashes in path names to avoid this.

For more information, refer to this issue raised in R help: How to replace double backslash with single backslash in R.