How to stop wordpress mangling R syntax ‘<-‘?

I have a self-hosted WP install, and have been using codecolorer (and have tried a few others along the way) to highlight R syntax. Looks nice, too.

The problem is that R uses a <- symbol instead of = when assigning objects (on pretty much every single line), and when you switch from ‘Visual’ to ‘HTML’ while editing a post it will mangle the code – <- becomes &lt;-; worse, sections of the code will disappear.

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It would be possible to use = for the ‘assign’ command but it’s not, strictly-speaking, correct. At the moment I have to do all the pretty writing and inserting of images in WYSIWYG ‘visual’ mode, then switch to HTML just before I post to fix up the R code, and then be careful never to switch back again. Ever.

Any fixes for this behaviour?

EDIT: examples!
Putting this into the Visual editor:

[cc]
lorum <- ipsum
[/cc]

Produces the following in the final post:

lorum &lt;- ipsum

Going back to HTML mode and putting a <- code worked for the final post but then I could never switch back to Visual without the < being interpreted as part of a tag.

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1 comment

  1. Solved it. A real RTFM moment.

    The FAQ for CodeColorer makes a note about this (though it’s not mentioned in the main how-to text).

    Using the escaped = "true" code in the [cc] tag brings back the behaviour I was looking for – now it’s possible to write the <- operator in Visual (and it becomes &lt in HTML), but the published post displays <- correctly.

    Thus, entering this in the visual editor:

    [cc escaped="true"]
    lorum <- ipsum
    [/cc]
    

    Produces, in the published post:

    lorum <- ipsum