[R] sprintf doesn't care of escape characters

[jim holtman]

sprintf is working just fine.  Your problem is the interpretation of
what the results are.  Displaying the object will show the escape
characters, but if you use "cat", or output to a file, you will see
that the result is correct:


> cat( sprintf("a\nb"))
a
b>
> cat(sprintf("a\"bc\"d"))
a"bc"d>
>



On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 1:29 PM, Edwin Helbert Aponte Angarita
<helbert2a at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I am having trouble with something that should be simple. I am unable
> to get sprintf using escape sequences:
>
>> sprintf("a\nb")
> [1] "a\nb"
>
>> sprintf("a\"bc\"d")
> [1] "a\"bc\"d"
>
> But it seems to need them any way:
>
>> sprintf("a\"bc"d")
> Error: unexpected symbol in "sprintf("a\"bc"d"
>
> Any suggestion on how to solve this issue?
>
> My R system:
>> version
>                _
> platform       x86_64-suse-linux-gnu
> arch           x86_64
> os             linux-gnu
> system         x86_64, linux-gnu
> status
> major          2
> minor          15.0
> year           2012
> month          03
> day            30
> svn rev        58871
> language       R
> version.string R version 2.15.0 (2012-03-30)
>
> Thanks.
>
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.



-- 
Jim Holtman
Data Munger Guru

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
Tell me what you want to do, not how you want to do it.