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I'm having trouble processing a file in R. I've seen that backslashes are difficult to deal with in R, but that question is old and I'm hoping that someone has something that will help. Here's an example that works as expected:

"    \"IRIS1003\": {" -> x
gsub('\"','XX', x)

After this, x contains XXIRIS1003XX": {. However, I want to simply remove the backslashes, rather than treating them as escape characters for the double quotes. I.e., I want to keep the double quotes so that the result is that x contains "IRIS1003": {. I suppose I could do this in two steps - the gsub() that I just did followed by replacing the XX, but I'd rather do this in a single step because the larger file might originally contain the string XX. Any ideas?

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    The backslashes are not really there. They are displayed by the default print() method to show that the double quotes are part of the string, not string ending. If you display your string with cat(x) it will display without the backslashes and get you your desired result. But you do not need to modify the string to get there because your string does not contain any backslashes even if print() shows them. Commented Jun 3, 2025 at 12:57
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    This seems like a classic XY problem. You imply you are having a problem X with backslashes that you don't give any detail on. You think if you can solve problem Y, removing the backslashes, you will solve problem X. But problem Y isn't really a problem. So, tell us about X. What are you trying to do that you think getting rid of the backslashes will help with? We can help you and almost certainly show that the backslashes are not part of the problem or solution. Commented Jun 3, 2025 at 13:02
  • I agree about the XY problem. Unfortunately, these data have come to me with the X problem and I can't (yet) get at the original data to solve X. So, I'm left with Y. Sigh... Commented Jun 3, 2025 at 13:13
  • If extracting a dataframe from a JSON is your goal, you can use jsonlite::fromJSON("{\"IRIS1003\":\"Test\"}") see fromJSON. 'I want to keep the double quotes so that the result is that x contains "IRIS1003": {' - you already have that. To quote this R always displays strings in double-quotes. That \ tells R to “escape” the next character. In this case, the \" is saying, " is part of the string, not the end of the string. Commented Jun 3, 2025 at 13:22
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    The point of the XY problem analogy is that solving Y won't help. What are you trying to do with this string? Because you don't need to remove the (nonexistent) backslashes to do it. Tim G's comment starts "If extracting a dataframe from JSON is your goal..." and provides a solution. He's guessing at your goal because you haven't told us what it is. If that's your goal, listen to Tim. If that's not your goal, tell us what your goal is! Commented Jun 3, 2025 at 14:05

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If you use the noquote R function, it will "leave" the backslashes off and give you the desired output

x <- noquote("    \"IRIS1003\": {")
gsub('\"','XX',x
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Thanks! I'd (obviously) completely forgotten about noquote(); it addresses the issue I'm having.

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