Removing backslash from strings in R

Question

I want to remove list(\" and \")from strings such as list(\"TSPAN6\") and get TSPAN6. I tried to do that with grep function, however I have problem with backslashes included the strings. I tried:

gsub('list(\\"','', "list(\"TSPAN6\")", fixed=T)

but it does not work?! I appreciate if you could help me.

Answer 1

Using one single gsub.

x <- c("list(\"TSPAN6\")")
x
[1] "list(\"TSPAN6\")"
gsub('list|[[:punct:]]', "", x)
[1] "TSPAN6"

Answer 2

I found it:

a <- gsub('list(\"','', "list(\"TSPAN6\")", fixed=T)
gsub('\")','', a, fixed=T)
[1] "TSPAN6"