CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rregex
vdvaxel
vdvaxel

Reputation: 745

Replace punctuation in string

I want to replace the punctuation in a string by adding '\\' before the punctuation. The reason is I will be using regex on the string afterwards and it fails if there is a question mark without '\\' in front of it.

So basically, I would like to do something like this:

gsub("\\?","\\\\?", x)

Which converts a string "How are you?" to "How are you\\?" But I would like to do this for all punctuation. Is this possible?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1789

Answers (1)

Jaguar
Jaguar

Reputation: 204

You can use gsub with the [[:punct:]] regular expression alias as follows:

> x <- "Hi! How are you today?"
> gsub('([[:punct:]])', '\\\\\\1', x)
[1] "Hi\\! How are you today\\?"

Note the replacement starts with '\\\\' to produce the double backslash you requested while the '\\1' portion preserves the punctuation mark.

Upvotes: 3

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