[R] Strange paste, string or package problem?

[Berwin A Turlach]

G'day Thomas,

On Tue, 4 Mar 2008 14:40:35 +1300
"Thomas Allen" <hedbag at gmail.com> wrote:

> I came across this strange bug the other day, I'm not sure how to
> solve it and I wonder if anyone can even replicate it.

> Step 1) Make an R package using the package.skeleton() command with
> only these two functions:
> 
> error <- function(){
>   cmd <- paste(" -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
>                " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
>                " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
>                " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
>                " –a ",1,sep="")
>   cat(cmd,"\n")
> }

> Now why does that "<e2><80><93>" replace one of the "-" in the first
> command?

With my mailtool, the "-" before the last a looks a bit longer than the
others; it definitely seems to be a different tool.  Also, if I cut and
paste this function into an emacs buffer on my Kubuntu machine, I see:

error <- function(){
  cmd <- paste(" -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " \u2013a ",1,sep="")
  cat(cmd,"\n")
}

So somehow you must have entered not a "-" but some other symbol before
that last a.  And I guess what you see is a result of the locale and
the character encoding that you are working in.  But others would know
more about this than I and can probably explain better what is going on.

Cheers,

	Berwin

=========================== Full address =============================
Berwin A Turlach                            Tel.: +65 6516 4416 (secr)
Dept of Statistics and Applied Probability        +65 6516 6650 (self)
Faculty of Science                          FAX : +65 6872 3919       
National University of Singapore     
6 Science Drive 2, Blk S16, Level 7          e-mail: statba at nus.edu.sg
Singapore 117546                    http://www.stat.nus.edu.sg/~statba