[Rd] issue with print()ing multibyte characters on R 4.0.4

[Hiroaki Yutani]

Hi all,

I saw several people on Japanese locale claim that, on R 4.0.4,
print() doesn't display
Japanese characters correctly. This seems to happen only on Windows
and on macOS (I
usually use Linux and I don't see this problem).

For example, in the result below, "鬼" and "外" are displayed in
"\uXXXX" format. What's
curious here is that "は" is displayed as it is, by the way.

> "鬼は外"
[1] "\u9b3cは\u5916"

But, if I use such functions as message() or cat(), the string is
displayed as it is.

> message("鬼は外")
鬼は外

Considering the fact that it seems only Windows and macOS are
affected, I suspect this
is somehow related to this change described in the release note,
(though I have no idea
what change this is):

    The internal table for iswprint (used on Windows, macOS and AIX) has been
    updated to include many recent Unicode characters.
    (https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/NEWS.html)

Before I'm going to file this issue on Bugzilla, I'd like to confirm
if this is not the intended
change, and, if this is actually intended, I want to discuss how to
improve this behaviour.

Best,
Hiroaki Yutani