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R Strings / Characters

A character, or strings, are used for storing text. A string is surrounded by either single quotation marks, or double quotation marks

String Literals

A character, or 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':

Example

"hello"
'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:

Example

str <- "Hello"
str # print the value of str

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

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)

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:

Example

str <- "Hello World!"

nchar(str)

Check a String

Use the grepl() function to check if a character or a sequence of characters are present in a string:

Example

str <- "Hello World!"

grepl("H", str)
grepl("Hello", str)
grepl("X", str)

Combine Two Strings

Use the paste() function to merge/concatenate two strings:

Example

str1 <- "Hello"
str2 <- "World"

paste(str1, str2)

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)

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

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