R help - Sep 2003 - how to insert a double quote with the paste function?

Hello,

I would like to write in a variable the following string :

Hello "World"

If I do cat("Hello ","\"World\""), I have the good
result on the screen
but it can not be affected to a variable. If I do the same thing with 
paste paste("Hello ","\"World\"") it does not work
since \" seems to be
not recognized. So what is the trick to do that.

Thanks,

Philippe
-- 

--------------------------------------------------

Philippe Hup?
Institut Curie - Equipe Bioinformatique
26, rue d'Ulm - 75005 PARIS France
+33 (0)1 44 32 42 75

Philippe.Hupe at curie.fr <mailto:Philippe.Hupe at curie.fr>

Philippe Hup? <Philippe.Hupe at curie.fr> wrote:
> I would like to write in a variable the following string :
> 
> Hello "World"
> 
> If I do cat("Hello ","\"World\""), I have the
good result on the screen
> but it can not be affected to a variable. If I do the same thing with 
> paste paste("Hello ","\"World\"") it does not
work since \" seems to be
> not recognized. So what is the trick to do that.

How about:
> h<-'hello "World"'
> h
[1] "hello \"World\""
> cat(h, "\n")
hello "World"
> 
-- 
Philippe Glaziou
Institut Pasteur du Cambodge

Philippe

You seem to have the right answer already, unless I misunderstand...

If I define:
> x = "Hello \"World\""
Then the default print method for this character string will give the rather
ugly looking:
> x
[1] "Hello \"World\""

But this is just R telling us that it does recognise the escape sequence
\". If we pass this variable to a more output-friendly function like cat,
we get:
> cat(x)
Hello "World"

So the variable x really does contain  'Hello "World"',
it's just that R's default print method will show the escape characters
used in a string.




-----Original Message-----
From: Philippe Hup? [mailto:Philippe.Hupe at curie.fr] 
Sent: 11 September 2003 08:55
To: 'r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch'
Subject: [R] how to insert a double quote with the paste function?


Hello,

I would like to write in a variable the following string :

Hello "World"

If I do cat("Hello ","\"World\""), I have the good
result on the screen
but it can not be affected to a variable. If I do the same thing with 
paste paste("Hello ","\"World\"") it does not work
since \" seems to be
not recognized. So what is the trick to do that.

Thanks,

Philippe
-- 

--------------------------------------------------

Philippe Hup?
Institut Curie - Equipe Bioinformatique
26, rue d'Ulm - 75005 PARIS France
+33 (0)1 44 32 42 75

Philippe.Hupe at curie.fr <mailto:Philippe.Hupe at curie.fr>

______________________________________________
R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Philippe Hup? wrote:
> I would like to write in a variable the following string :
> 
> Hello "World"
> 
> If I do cat("Hello ","\"World\""), I have the
good result on the screen
> but it can not be affected to a variable. If I do the same thing with 
> paste paste("Hello ","\"World\"") it does not
work since \" seems to be
> not recognized. So what is the trick to do that.
It is recognized:
> xx <- paste("Hello ","\"World\"") 
> print(xx)
[1] "Hello  \"World\""
> cat(xx, "\n")
Hello  "World" 
> print(xx, quote=FALSE)
[1] Hello  "World"

It's likely that it is the behaviour of print() you did not understand: 
the quote appears by itself in the character string but is escaped when 
printed within quotes.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

The paste is doing the right thing -- it is how it is displayed
that matters:

 > jj <- paste("hello", "\"world\"")
 > jj
[1] "hello \"world\""
 > cat(jj)
hello "world"> print(jj, quote=FALSE)
[1] hello "world"

Patrick Burns

Burns Statistics
patrick at burns-stat.com
+44 (0)20 8525 0696
http://www.burns-stat.com
(home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")

Philippe Hup? wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I would like to write in a variable the following string :
>
> Hello "World"
>
> If I do cat("Hello ","\"World\""), I have the
good result on the
> screen but it can not be affected to a variable. If I do the same 
> thing with paste paste("Hello ","\"World\"")
it does not work since \"
> seems to be not recognized. So what is the trick to do that.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Philippe