[R] R 1.9.0, special characters in variable names.

[Sixten Borg]

Hello all,

I upgraded from R 1.8.1 to 1.9.0 (Windows XP), and spotted an odd thing.

The last three letters in the Swedish alphabet are å, ä and ö. (In case they don't show correctly: they are a with a ring, a with two dots, and o with two dots (HTML: å  ä ö).

When I use these as variable names in a data.frame, odd things happen:
In R 1.8.1, å (å) doesn't work while the others do.
In R 1.9.0, ö (ö) doesn't work while the others do.

Please find examples below. It would be nice if all three could be used in variable names. At least in Sweden :-)

Thanks...
Sixten.

#
# R 1.9.0: ö is renamed to X.
#

> data.frame(a=1, å=2, ä=3, ö=4)
  a å ä X.
1 1 2 3  4
> version
         _              
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch     i386           
os       mingw32        
system   i386, mingw32  
status                  
major    1              
minor    9.0            
year     2004           
month    04             
day      12             
language R              
> 


#
# R 1.8.1: å is renamed to X.
#

> data.frame(a=1, å=2, ä=3, ö=4)
  a X. ä ö
1 1  2 3 4
> version
         _              
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch     i386           
os       mingw32        
system   i386, mingw32  
status                  
major    1              
minor    8.1            
year     2003           
month    11             
day      21             
language R          


#