R Escape Characters

Escape Characters

To insert characters that are illegal in a string, you must use an escape character.

An escape character is a backslash \ followed by the character you want to insert.

An example of an illegal character is a double quote inside a string that is surrounded by double quotes:

str <- "We are the so-called "Vikings", from the north."

str

Result:

Error: unexpected symbol in "str <- "We are the so-called "Vikings"

To fix this problem, use the escape character \":

The escape character allows you to use double quotes when you normally would not be allowed:

str <- "We are the so-called \"Vikings\", from the north."

str
cat(str)

Note that auto-printing the str variable will print the backslash in the output. You can use the cat() function to print it without backslash.

Other escape characters in R: