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.

nograpes · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-12 18:19:08Z

8

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.

edited Oct 12, 2013 at 18:19

answered Oct 12, 2013 at 12:36

nograpes

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4 Comments

Simon O'Hanlon Over a year ago

The author did use cat. Read to the end of the OP! :-)

nograpes Over a year ago

@SimonO101 I missed that.

Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren Over a year ago

Thanks for the information about the options! Much appreciated!

crsh Over a year ago

Is there a way of doing this in an inline code section?

IRTFM · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-12 11:54:10Z

6

There is no backslash in the character element "\cite". The backslash is being interpreted as an escape and the two character "\c" is being interpreted as a cntrl-c. Except that is not a recognized character. See ?Quotes. The second version has only one backslash followed by 4 alpha characters. Count the characters to see this:

nchar("\\cite")
[1] 5

answered Oct 12, 2013 at 11:54

IRTFM

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1 Comment

Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren Over a year ago

I see now that there's a typo in my message and have edited it. Apparenyly, stackoverflow treats "\\" as "\" when it creates output. Which is, in my experience, expected behavior.

Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-12 12:05:10Z

3

OK,

<<echo=FALSE,result='asis'>>
result <- cat(rbib)
@

does the trick (without the result <- bit, [1] is added). It just feels kludgy.

edited Oct 12, 2013 at 12:05

answered Oct 12, 2013 at 11:58

Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren

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