[Rd] R string comparisons may vary with platform (plain text)

[Stuart Ambler]

A colleague¹s R program behaved differently when I ran it, and we thought
we traced it probably to different results from string comparisons as
below, with different R versions.  However the platforms also differed.  A
friend ran it on a few machines and found that the comparison behavior
didn¹t correlate with R version, but rather with platform.

I wonder if you¹ve seen this.  If it¹s not some setting I¹m unaware of,
maybe someone should look into it.  Sorry I haven¹t taken the time to read
the source code myself.

Thanks,
Stuart

R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25) -- "Frisbee Sailing"
Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Sys.getlocale()
[1] 
"LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8;LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF
-8;LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8;LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8;LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8;LC_
NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8;LC_IDENTIFICA
TION=C"

"-1" > "1"
[1] TRUE

"-1" <"1"
[1] FALSE

"1" < "-1"
[1] TRUE

"1" < "-"
[1] FALSE

Vs.

R version 3.1.1 (2014-07-10) ‹ ³Sock it to Me"
Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Sys.getlocale()
[1] 
"LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_US.utf8;LC_COLLATE=en_US.utf8
;LC_MONETARY=en_US.utf8;LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8;LC_PAPER=en_US.utf8;LC_NAME
=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.utf8;LC_IDENTIFICATION
=C"

"-1" > "1"
[1] FALSE

"-1" <"1"
[1] TRUE

"1" < "-1"
[1] FALSE

"1" < "-"
[1] FALSE