I would like to ammend some .tex files from within R. I read the file with readLines() but I cannot replace the following text.
tex <- "$\\times$"
new_tex <- gsub("$\\times$", "\\ $\\times$", tex)
new_tex
It seems that it cannot find the $\\times$
But even if it does, is it possible to write \ without escaping them?
Thank you in advance!
gsub uses regular expressions by default unless you set fixed=TRUE.
In regular expressions $ means the end of the sentence , that's why it does not work.
This, instead should work :
new_tex <- gsub("$\\times$", "\\ $\\times$", tex,fixed=TRUE)
About the backslash, no, you can't write a backslash without escaping it. Otherwise, for example, it would be impossible for the R interpreter, to distinguish between a tab \t and a "backslash + t".
Without fixed = TRUE:
gsub("\\$\\\\times\\$", "\\\\ $\\\\times\\$", tex)
[1] "\\ $\\times$"
Unfortunately you need a lot of backslashes because you need to escape pretty much everything.