R-alpha: ISO-latin-1 characters in strings -- print.default & PARSE(?) problems

[Martin Maechler]

There seems to be a problem in print.default with some
ISO-latin1 characters (the chars AFTER ASCII in western Europe...)
if they appear in strings. 
(no problem if they are part of a function comment, see below).

Some of the characters lead to 4 character Hex-codes being printed instead:
"û" ## ^u    prints as "0xFB"

If you use the funny characters in comments of functions, they are stored
and printed properly.

HOWEVER: In a few rare cases, the strings are not even PARSED properly;
	the line 'ISOdiv <- ..' below gives a SYNTAX error.

The following code shows the symptoms :
   -- ONLY if  the e-mail between here and your place is  8-bit clean! --
  (else: get it ftp://ftp.stat.math.ethz.ch/U/maechler/R/string-test.R )

frenchquotes <- "«...»"  ## <<...>>
frenchquotes

Umlaute <- "äöü ÄÖÜ" # = "a "o "u  "A "O "U
Umlaute #- only the last one is not printed properly...

A.accents <- "àáâãäåæ ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆ" # `a 'a ^a "a oa ae  `A 'A ^A "A oA AE
A.accents
EI.accents <- "ÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏ èéêëìíîï"
EI.accents
O.accents <- "ÒÓÔÕÖØòóôõöø"
O.accents

U.accents <- "ÙÚÛÜÝùúûüý"
U.accents

ISO24x <-  "¡¢£¤¥¦§ ¨©ª«¬­®¯" #octal 241..257
ISO26x <- "°±²³´µ¶· ¸¹º»¼½¾¿" #octal 260..277

##--- THIS IS a Problem: It gives a SYNTAX error !
ISOdiv <- "×÷ Ðð Ññ Þþ ßÿ" 
##-- One of these characters even was producing the same as  'q()' !!

aa_ function(x) {
  x^2
  ##- frenchquotes <- "«...»"  ## <<...>>
  ##- Umlaute <- "äöü ÄÖÜ" # = "a "o "u  "A "O "U
  ##- A.accents <- "àáâãäåæ ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆ" # `a 'a ^a "a oa ae  `A 'A ^A "A oA AE
  ##- EI.accents <- "ÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏ èéêëìíîï"
  ##- O.accents <- "ÒÓÔÕÖØòóôõöø"
  ##- U.accents <- "ÙÚÛÜÝùúûüý"
  ##-
  ##- ISO24x <-  "¡¢£¤¥¦§ ¨©ª«¬­®¯" #octal 241..257
  ##- ISO26x <- "°±²³´µ¶· ¸¹º»¼½¾¿" #octal 260..277
  ##- ISOdiv <- "×÷ Ðð" ##-- OMITTED further: SYNTAX error !!
}
aa
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