x <- c("août", "élève", "ça va") y <- iconv(x, "UTF-8", "latin1") x #> [1] "août" "élève" "ça va" y #> [1] "août" "élève" "ça va" (note the difference in spacing) On both R-release (mac) and R-devel (linux). nchar() and format() both look ok. Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/