R Strings
String Literals
Strings are used for storing text.
A string is surrounded by either single quotation marks, or double quotation marks:
"hello" is the same as
'hello':
Assign a String to a Variable
Assigning a string to a variable is done with the variable followed by the <- operator and the string:
Multiline Strings
You can assign a multiline string to a variable like this:
Example
str <- "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
consectetur adipiscing elit,
sed do
eiusmod tempor incididunt
ut labore et dolore magna aliqua."
str # print the value of str
Try it Yourself »
However, note that R will add a "\n" at the end of each line break. This is called an escape character, and the n character indicates a new line.
If you want the line breaks to be inserted at the same position as in the code, use the cat() function:
Example
str <- "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
consectetur adipiscing elit,
sed do
eiusmod tempor incididunt
ut labore et dolore magna aliqua."
cat(str)
Try it Yourself »
String Length
There are many usesful string functions in R.
For example, to find the number of characters in a string, use the nchar() function:
Check a String
Use the grepl() function to check if a character or a sequence of characters are present in a string:
Combine Two Strings
Use the paste() function to merge/concatenate two strings:
Escape Characters
To insert characters that are illegal in a string, you must use an escape character.
An escape character is a backslash \ followed by the character you want to insert.
An example of an illegal character is a double quote inside a string that is surrounded by double quotes:
Example
str <- "We are the so-called "Vikings", from the north."
str
Result:
Error: unexpected symbol in "str <- "We are the so-called "Vikings"
To fix this problem, use the escape character \":
Example
The escape character allows you to use double quotes when you normally would not be allowed:
str <- "We are the so-called \"Vikings\", from the north."
str
cat(str)
Try it Yourself »
Note that auto-printing the str variable will print the backslash
in the output. You can use the cat() function to print
it without backslash.
Other escape characters in R:
| Code | Result |
|---|---|
| \\ | Backslash |
| \n | New Line |
| \r | Carriage Return |
| \t | Tab |
| \b | Backspace |
