strsplit in R using | as the pattern

Question

I have a series of strings that I need to split on the character "|" for example:

fruits <- c(
  "apples|oranges|pears|bananas",
  "pineapples|mangos|guavas"
)
str_split(fruits, "|")

Which outputs:

[[1]]
 [1] ""  "a" "p" "p" "l" "e" "s" "|" "o" "r" "a" "n" "g" "e" "s" "|"
[17] "p" "e" "a" "r" "s" "|" "b" "a" "n" "a" "n" "a" "s" "" 

[[2]]
 [1] ""  "p" "i" "n" "e" "a" "p" "p" "l" "e" "s" "|" "m" "a" "n" "g"
[17] "o" "s" "|" "g" "u" "a" "v" "a" "s" "" 

This is not what I am looking for, I am wanting

[[1]]
[1] "apples"  "oranges" "pears"   "bananas"

[[2]]
[1] "pineapples" "mangos"     "guavas"  

I figure there is something wrong with what I am entering in the RegEx pattern argument of the str_split but I am not sure what is wrong with it.

Please help, thanks.

Answer 1

I needed to escape the "|"

str_split(fruits, "\\|")