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rregexstringrstringi

Replace backslash to double backslash in special character

How can I replace the backslash in "\u2655" (greater equal sign) to "\\u2655"?

I've tried the following:

str_replace_all("\u2265", "\\\\", "\\\\\\")
stri_replace_all_fixed("\u2265", "\\", "\\\\")

Both lead to "≥" which is not "\u2265".

Solution

  • We interpret the problem as having an input character string containing unicode and we want to show the unicode as escaped symbols instead.

    Use

    stringi::stri_escape_unicode(x)

    For example if x is a single unicode character then this will give a 6 character string whose first character is backslash, second is u and next 4 are digits.

    x <- "\u2265"

nchar(x)
## [1] 1

cat(x, "\n")
## ≥

y <- stringi::stri_escape_unicode(x)

nchar(y)
## [1] 6

cat(y, "\n")
## \u2265