Efficiently convert backslash to forward slash in R

Question

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.

Answer 1

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"