use of read.delim() when there are backslashes in the data in R

I have a tab delimited text file where there are backslashes in the file as follows:

V1      V2
abc     123
456     \23
nyc &^#

Ho开发者_开发百科wever, when I use read.delim('foo.txt'), it adds an extra backslash as follows:

> read.delim('foo.txt')
       V1   V2
1     abc  123
2     456 \\23
3 nyc &^#

Is there a way to change a parameter so this behavior doesn't happen?

It doesn't add an extra backslash. It just looks like it. What's nchar(foo$V2)?

\\ is the code for a single backslash, because \n is the code for a new line and so on. So if you see \\n its two characters - a backslash and a letter 'n', but \n is one character - a newline.

Its an escape mechanism.

> Z[,1]
[1] "\\1"
> nchar(Z[,1])
[1] 2

Its like the same reason I have to type four backslashes to get two in this text box...