print backslash in R strings

Question

GNU R 3.02

> bib <- "\cite"
Error: '\c' is an unrecognized escape in character string starting ""\c"
> bib <- "\\cite"
> print(bib)
[1] "\\cite"
> sprintf(bib)
[1] "\\cite"
> 

how can I print out the string variable bib with just one "\"?

(I've tried everything conceivable, and discover that R treats the "\\" as one character.)

I see that in many cases this is not a problem, since this is usually handled internally by R, say, if the string were to be used as text for a plot.

But I need to send it to LaTeX. So I really have to remove it.

I see cat does the trick. If cat could only be made to send its result to a string.

Answer 1

You should use cat.

bib <- "\\cite"
cat(bib)
# \cite

---

You can remove the ## and [1] by setting a few options in knitr. Here is an example chunk:

<<newChunk,echo=FALSE,comment=NA,background=NA>>=
bib <- "\\cite"
cat(bib)
@

which gets you \cite. Note as well that you can set these options globally.