How to display verbatim inline r code with backticks using Rmarkdown?

Here is a trick that I use. First, note \x60 is `:

> cat('\x60', '\n')
` 

Then you write

`r '\x60r foo+bar\x60'`

which will give you `r foo+bar` in the markdown output, but that will become r foo+bar in the HTML output, so you need to protect the backticks in markdown, using two (or more) backticks. Then you end up with this hairball:

`` `r '\x60r foo+bar\x60'` ``

Your own solution is good, but I'd just define

rinline <- function(code) {
  sprintf('``` `r %s` ```', code)
}

Also see this post for another trick.

To anyone looking at this now, you may want to check out the more recent solution here: embed Rmarkdown without knitr evaluation

Essentially you can do:

Some R code inline : `r knitr::inline_expr("2+2")`

I'm guessing that the functionality describe above has been added to knitr directly but it saves us defining the function ourselves.