[R] How to read a matrix with Hebrew row names?

[peter dalgaard]

On Oct 6, 2010, at 16:13 , Eitan Tzelgov wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I am trying to read a matrix with row names in Hebrew, but I am unable to read
> the Hebrew words, e.g.:
> 
> להחזיק           -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01 
> 9.854603e-01  1.111321e+00
> שאחרי             -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01  7.421092e-01 
> 3.439690e-01
> היישוב           -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01 
> 1.050982e+00  1.125970e+00
> בתים               -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01 -5.607143e-01
> -5.266479e-01
> שמחה               -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01  5.390752e-01 
> 1.210426e+00
> מקומיות         -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01 
> 2.756580e-01  7.413793e-01
> בתחומי           -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01 
> 1.411763e+00  1.110181e+00
> שבאים             -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01 -5.583328e-01
> -5.942577e-01
> לשבח               -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01  1.329662e+00 
> 8.314318e-01
> התלמידים       -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01
> -8.652285e-01 -6.453765e-01
> להתערב           -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01  3.133604e-01
> -3.698027e-01
> תרומה             -1.544317e-02 -2.398621e-01  8.353492e-01 
> 4.940267e-01
> ×•×× ×•               -1.544317e-02  4.375258e+00 -8.652285e-01
> -6.453765e-01
> 
> I have tried to change the system locale to hebrew, i.e.,
> Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "Hebrew"), and tried to read the fiele transforming it
> to a talbe using as.talbe using:
> beta<- read.table(x, header=T, sep="\t", encoding="UTF-8")
> 
> but I get the follwonig error message.
> 
> Error in read.table(x, header = T, sep = "\t", encoding = "UTF-8") : 
>  'file' must be a character string or connection
> 
> After moving back to english, sessionInfo () gives:
> R version 2.10.0 (2009-10-26) 
> i386-pc-mingw32 
> locale:
> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252 
> [2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252   
> [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
> [4] LC_NUMERIC=C                          
> [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252    
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] tools_2.10.0
> 
> Does anyone have any ideas on to read the Hebrew content?

Not really, but I notice that the error message relates to the filename, not the contents... Whatever x is, it is not the name of the file.

-- 
Peter Dalgaard
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com