Interpreting "\" in strings (Splus 2000, Windows 2000) as a directory character

[Karl Nissen <karl.nissen@anu.edu.au>]

Morning,

I'm reading a string from a file using scan(). The file contains a typical 
DOS/Window directory string:
"D:\datasets\geog3009\fred.dat"

When this is read into Splus using scan(), the back slashes are removed:

"D:datasetsgeog3009fred.dat"

This is consistent with the use of the backslash as an escape character in 
the UNIX world.
Is there a simple way to tell scan(), or Splus, to interpret the single 
backslash as a directory character, rather than an escape character, so the 
string is not modified?
Thanks, Karl