[R] issue with encoding in R-2.8.1 invalid multibyte character

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 31 Dec 2008, Wijffels, Jan wrote:

> Yes, it was the section sign (double s) symbol that I was trying to
> print connecting from a Windows machine with Latin1 encoding to a UTF-8
> Linux machine.
> I changed the translation behaviour in my Putty SSH from Latin1 to UTF-8
> and now the interactive R programming works.
> My scripts which I run with Rscript my_script.r contain quite some
> Latin-1 characters. These ran ok in R2.7.0 but not any more in R2.8.1
> but I presume this is because in 2.7.1 the changes made to the system
> indicated 'The parser sometimes accepted invalid quoted strings in a
> UTF-8 locale'.
> So this means for me I need to change the scripts I develop in Latin1 on
> Windows to UTF-8 before I upload them to our server.

Or, as I suggested below, run the R session on the server in Latin1.

% LC_ALL=nl_BE  R

(guessing, or use en_US) should do it.

> Thanks for the help.
>
> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]
> Verzonden: woensdag 31 december 2008 9:22
> Aan: Peter Dalgaard
> CC: Wijffels, Jan; r-help at r-project.org
> Onderwerp: Re: [R] issue with encoding in R-2.8.1 invalid multibyte
> character
>
> On Wed, 31 Dec 2008, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
>
>> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>>> Well, we don't see what you see. but if ? was hex a7, the message is
>>> entirely correct.  If you want to enter that, use "\xa7".
>>
>> We see different things.
>
> Right, and my point is that we do not know what he actually sees.
>
>> I see  a section sign (double s) symbol. From the
>> symptoms, I would suspect that the terminal is set to latin-1 or -15
> (both
>> have the section sign at 0xa7) even though the system (and thus R) is
> utf-8.
>
> I thought of that, but if the system is in UTF-8, so would its keyboard
> be.  Perhaps this is a remote session from a Windows system to a UTF-8
> one? (In which case set the remote locale appropriately.)
>
> The issue seemed to be about entering Latin characters (-1 or -9, I
> think:
> latin-9 is ISO 8859-15), and that is what I tried to answer.
>
> -- 
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595