remove all line breaks (enter symbols) from the string using R

Question

How to remove all line breaks (enter symbols) from the string?

my_string <- "foo\nbar\rbaz\r\nquux"

I've tried gsub("\n", "", my_string), but it doesn't work, because new line and line break aren't equal.

score 113 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 14 '14 at 13:50

113

You need to strip \r and \n to remove carriage returns and new lines.

x <- "foo\nbar\rbaz\r\nquux"
gsub("[\r\n]", "", x)
## [1] "foobarbazquux"

Or

library(stringr)
str_replace_all(x, "[\r\n]" , "")
## [1] "foobarbazquux"

answered Feb 14 '14 at 13:50

Richie Cotton

1

Will this work if its a literal "\n" in the string? – Mojimi Aug 02 '19 at 20:17
1

@Mojimi - I've just come across this problem, and find that using `gsub("[\\n]",...)` works. – Thomas Rushton Aug 14 '19 at 09:29
1

@ThomasRushton, that found all instances of the letter n for me. – Nova Aug 19 '21 at 14:28

score 21 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 01 '15 at 11:35

21

I just wanted to note here that if you want to insert spaces where you found newlines the best option is to use the following:

gsub("\r?\n|\r", " ", x)

which will insert only one space regardless whether the text contains \r\n, \n or \r.

answered Jul 01 '15 at 11:35

Midnighter

1

This is a nice and complete answer. I like the `\r\n` touch. Note that one can use `trimws(x, "right")` to quickly trim off newline and carriage returns if they appear only at the end of `x`. This will, of course, trim trailing spaces, tabs, etc. – Geoffrey Poole Apr 14 '18 at 08:03

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 05 '22 at 19:44

0

Have had success with:

gsub("\\\n", "", x)

answered Sep 05 '22 at 19:44

cmoez

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 24 '22 at 14:01

0

With stringr::str_remove_all

library(stringr)
str_remove_all(my_string, "[\r\n]")
# [1] "foobarbazquux"

answered Oct 24 '22 at 14:01

Julien

4 Answers4