R help - Dec 2011 - how to manually enter an double quote as data feed?

I'm doing a text mining project where I have to manually enter a double
quote
as an element inside a vector.

I tried

char[10]='"'#where i enclosed the double quote in a pair of single
quotes.

But the result is [1] "\"". Somehow a back slash is added
automatically.

I also tried to enclose the double quote in a pair of double quotes. That
didn't work either.

I'm using Mac and latest release of R.

Thank you!

Bonnie Yuan


--
View this message in context:
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/how-to-manually-enter-an-double-quote-as-data-feed-tp4192283p4192283.html
Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

"\"" is how its displayed on the screen.  however, if you write
your object
to a csv it will be correct.  r cant display """ as it is so it
is escaping
the second double quote for you

however, "'" (double quote single quote double quote) does display
correctly as well as save correctly.

If that doesn't answer your question, some more back story on what
you're
trying to do would help.

Justin

On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 2:03 PM, bonnieyuan <bby2103@columbia.edu> wrote:
> I'm doing a text mining project where I have to manually enter a double
> quote
> as an element inside a vector.
>
> I tried
>
> char[10]='"'#where i enclosed the double quote in a pair of
single quotes.
>
> But the result is [1] "\"". Somehow a back slash is added
automatically.
>
> I also tried to enclose the double quote in a pair of double quotes. That
> didn't work either.
>
> I'm using Mac and latest release of R.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Bonnie Yuan
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
>
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/how-to-manually-enter-an-double-quote-as-data-feed-tp4192283p4192283.html
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of bonnieyuan
> Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 2:04 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] how to manually enter an double quote as data feed?
> 
> I'm doing a text mining project where I have to manually enter a double
> quote
> as an element inside a vector.
> 
> I tried
> 
> char[10]='"'#where i enclosed the double quote in a pair of
single
> quotes.
> 
> But the result is [1] "\"". Somehow a back slash is added
> automatically.
> 
> I also tried to enclose the double quote in a pair of double quotes.
> That
> didn't work either.
> 
> I'm using Mac and latest release of R.
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> Bonnie Yuan
> 
Bonnie,

The backslach character in not actually there.  Since the double quote character
has special meaning in R, it needs to be 'escaped' to change its special
meaning to become a literal double quote character.  That is the function of the
\ escape character.

Try the following

s1 <- '"'  #assign as you did 
s2 <- "\"" #assign using escape character

s1         #displays with backslash
nchar(s1)  #but there is only 1 character in the string
s2
nchar(s2)

print(s1)  #prints backslash indicating literal double quote
cat(s1,'\n') #cat function displays without the backslash
             #notice n character is escaped, creating a newline character


Hope this is helpful,

Dan

Daniel J. Nordlund
Washington State Department of Social and Health Services
Planning, Performance, and Accountability
Research and Data Analysis Division
Olympia, WA 98504-5204