Changing "/" into "\" in R

Question

I need to change "/" into "\" in my R code. I have something like this:

tmp <- paste(getwd(),"tmp.xls",sep="/")

so my tmp is c:/Study/tmp.xls

and I want it to be: c:\Study\tmp.xls

Is it possible to change it in R?

Answer 1

Update as per comments.

If this is simply to save the file, then as @sgibb suggested, you are better off using file.path():

    file.path(getwd(), "tmp.xls") 

Update 2: You want double back-slashes.

tmp is a string and if you want to have an actual backslash you need to escape it -- with a backslash. However, when R interprets the double slashes (for example, when looking for a file with the path indicated by the string), it will treat the seemingly double slashes as one.

Take a look at what happens when you output the string with cat()

cat("c:\\Study\\tmp.xls")
c:\Study\tmp.xls

The second slash has "disappeared"

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Original Answer:

in R, \ is an escape character, thus if you want to print it literally, you need to escape the escape character: \\. This is what you want to put in your paste statement.

You can also use .Platform$file.sep as your sep argument, which will make your code much more portable.

 tmp <- paste(getwd(),"tmp.xls",sep=.Platform$file.sep)

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If you already have a string you would like to replace, you can use

    gsub("/", "\\", tmp, fixed=TRUE)