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I am looking for an efficient way to convert back slash to forward slash in R. Sometime I copy the link of the directory in Windows and I get something like this:
C:\Users\jd\Documents\folder\file.txt
How can I quickly change this to C:/Users/jd/Documents/folder/file.txt ? I cannot even read the above expression as character. It throws an error
"\u used without hex digits in character string starting ""C:\u".
I know TAB function in R helps to find the location fast, but was just wondering if there was any other work around. I could change the working directory to the location of folder also. I was just playing around and tried to convert backslash to forward slash and was not straight forward so asked this just because of curiosity.
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R is a work-alike clone of S which was developed like Unix at Bell Labs. Mac originally used colons (:) as folder separators (and still won't accept them in file names) and converted to slashes sometime during its long transition to BSD Unix which it licensed from ATT.
In R (and elsewhere), the backslash is the “escape” symbol, which is followed by another symbol to indicate a special character. For example, "\t" represents a “tab” and "\n" is the symbol for a new line (hard return). This is illustrated below.
Summary: The Backslash and Forward SlashThe backslash (\) is mostly used in computing and isn't a punctuation mark. The forward slash (/) can be used in place of “or” in less formal writing. It's also used to write dates, fractions, abbreviations, and URLs.
In R, you've to escape the \ with \\ So, your path should be:
x <- "C:\\Users\\jd\\Documents\\folder\\file.txt" To get that, you can do:
x <- readline() then, at the prompt, paste your unmodified path (CTRL+V then ENTER)
Finally, to change \\ to / everywhere, you could use gsub, once again by escaping the \, but twice, as follows:
gsub("\\\\", "/", x) # [1] "C:/Users/jd/Documents/folder/file.txt" If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
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