[R] How to know if a bug was recognised

[Prof Brian Ripley]

You have already been sent an answer.  It is a bug in your copy of 
Windows, and it will be worked around in the current version of R-patched. 
From the CHANGES file:

   R 2.0.1 patched
   ===============

   We work around reported bugs in Windows XP as to which characters are
   printable by attempting to print all non-control characters when using
   print().

Note: no one else has reported a problem on 98SE, despite this having been 
the behaviour of R for three months, and it seemed only XP SP2 was 
affected.  Indeed, no one reported the problem for 2.0.0 at all, including 
all the alpha and beta test versions (except for Chinese where the 
characters are invalid and so the behaviour was correct), and so the 
workaround did not make 2.0.1.

BTW, your expectation that an email you sent at the weekend will be 
answered by Tuesday is completely unreasonable.  R is a volunteer project, 
and the developers do have other commitments (and occasionally make 
attempts to have a life).

[You could have read the archives of the R mailing lists to find that this 
was a known issue that had already been addressed.]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Heinz Tuechler wrote:

> Hello!
>
> A problem with special characters seemed to me to be a bug. I sent a mail
> to R-windows at r-project.org concerning the problem (see below).
> How can I find out, if this is considered as a bug or an error of myself?
> Which part of FAQs or documentation did I miss to find the answer?
>
> thanks in advance
>
> Heinz Tüchler
>
> -------------------- copy of abovementioned mail ----------
> to: R-windows at r-project.org
> subject: problem with special characters (ä,ö,ü)
> Dear Developers!
>
> Using special characters I found a strange behaviour in R 2.0.1 and equally
> in
> R : Copyright 2004, The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
> Version 2.0.1  (2004-11-15), ISBN 3-900051-07-0
>
> Operating System: Windows 98SE
>
> example:
> factor1<-as.factor(c("weiblich","männlich","österreichisch","frühreif","Gruß
> "))
> factor1
>> factor1
> [1] weiblich           m\344nnlich        \366sterreichisch  fr\374hreif
>
> [5] Gru\337
> Levels: frühreif Gruß männlich österreichisch weiblich
>
> with best wishes
>
> Heinz Tüchler
>
> ______________________________________________
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> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595