normalizepath maybe what you are looking for:
> normalizePath(c(R.home(), tempdir()))
[1] "C:\\Program Files\\R\\R-3.1.0"
[2] "C:\\Users\\john\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\RtmpysKuFi"
> normalizePath(c(R.home(), tempdir()), winslash = '/')
[1] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.0"
[2] "C:/Users/john/AppData/Local/Temp/RtmpysKuFi"
readClipboard, Windows . , Windows, , :
> readClipboard()
[1] "C:\\Users\\john\\AppData\\Local\\Temp"
`normalizePath .