Remove Backslash and Quotations in R

Question

How do I remove the quotes from the following string in R?

test = "\"LAST4\""
noquote(test)
[1] "LAST4"

I'm reading in the data manually and I can't remove the quotations and backslashes.

What do you mean "I'm reading the data in manually"? It would be better to fix the problem at the time of import rather than later. — MrFlick, Dec 17 '15 at 15:28

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 17 '15 at 15:23

11

You don't need to escape anything if you don't use a regex:

gsub('\"', "", test, fixed = TRUE)
#[1] "LAST4"

answered Dec 17 '15 at 15:23

Roland

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Vongo · Answer 2 · 2015-12-18T07:02:30.343

0

Try :

gsub("\\\"","",test)
#[1] "LAST4"

AMEND :

@Roland 's solution improves both readability and performance :

require(rbenchmark)
test = "\"LAST4\""

a <- function() gsub("\\\"","",test)
b <- function() gsub('\"', "", test, fixed = TRUE)

benchmark(a(), b(), replications=10^7)
#  test replications elapsed relative user.self sys.self user.child sys.child
#1  a()     10000000  87.216    1.801    87.914        0          0         0
#2  b()     10000000  48.430    1.000    46.989        0          0         0

edited Dec 18 '15 at 07:02

answered Dec 17 '15 at 15:20

Vongo

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Try actually benchmarking the function evaluation: `benchmark(a(), b(), replications=10^5)` – Roland Dec 17 '15 at 18:52
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Oh, indeed, how stupid am I… Thank you @Roland ! I will amend my edit. – Vongo Dec 18 '15 at 06:58

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 03 '18 at 21:49

0

The solution in: "R - gsub replacing backslashes" worked for me.

Example:

library(stringr)
df$variable <- str_replace(df$variable,"\\\\\\\","")

df$variable before: "xyz\"
df$variable after:"xyz"

edited Feb 03 '18 at 21:49

m0nhawk

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answered Jul 17 '17 at 01:43

Ted

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Remove Backslash and Quotations in R

3 Answers3