[R] trouble with character \u00e2

[Charles Annis, P.E.]

Thank you, Professor Ripley:

Your example works for me too.  

plot(1:10, xlab = "a", ylab = "â")
file.label <- "EXAMPLE 1 â vs a.xls"
savePlot(paste("diagnostic â vs a ", file.label, ".jpg",
          sep = ""), type = "jpg")


But, if I read-in the file name using file.choose() I get the same corrupted
output filename ( "diagnostic â vs a EXAMPLE 1 â vs a.xls.jpg" ) from my R
routines.  However, if I paste that same file.label as it is printed to the
screen with my input routine, replacing your "foo" (as above) things work as
they should ( "diagnostic â vs a EXAMPLE 1 â vs a.xls.jpg" ).  Furthermore,
if I again run my plotting routines after your example (like that here,
above), my routines no longer produce corrupted filenames for the saved
plots.  

The trouble seems to be caused by my how I read-in the file name.  Here is a
simple example that produces a corrupted file name for the saved plot:

plot(1:10, xlab = "a", ylab = "â")
file.name <<- file.choose()
    print(file.name)
    file.label <<- basename(file.name)
savePlot(paste("diagnostic â vs a ", file.label, ".jpg",
          sep = ""), type = "jpg")


The name of my input Excel file is "EXAMPLE 1 â vs a.xls"  
The problem does not occur on R < R2.7.0

I am running R2.7.2 on a 5 year old DELL box (2 Gig RAM, 3GHz Pentium 4)
with Windows XP, and have also experienced the problem on my Thinkpad laptop
(2 Gig, Intel Core2 Duo, 1.6GHz) running Vista.

Thank you for your counsel.

Charles Annis, P.E.

Charles.Annis at StatisticalEngineering.com
phone: 561-352-9699
eFax:  614-455-3265
http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 4:39 AM
To: Charles Annis, P.E.
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] trouble with character \u00e2

You haven't given any of the information asked for in the posting guide.
But, assuming this is Windows in CP1252 (as I believe that has been your 
locale before), it works for me in current R.

plot(1:10)
file.label <- "foo"
savePlot(paste("diagnostic â vs a ", file.label, ".jpg",
          sep = ""), type = "jpg")

If you are not using 2.8.0 beta or 2.7.2 patched, please check those.
This might be related to

     o	file.path() did not work correctly in 2.7.0 if the components
 	had different encodings.

(NEWS for 2.7.1).

On Sun, 5 Oct 2008, Charles Annis, P.E. wrote:

> Greetings R-wizards:
>
> For historical reasons I have filenames with the character "â" and have
> successfully used "\u00e2" in its place, with the hoped-for result on all
my
> on-screen plots.
>
> However since R2.7.0 I have trouble with savePlot() when the file name
> includes that character as it does in this example:
>
> savePlot(paste("diagnostic â vs a ", file.label, ".jpg",
>        sep = ""), type = "jpg")
>
> In R2.6.0 and earlier, R would ignore a dot ('.') in the file name and
> supply the extension.  Since R2.7.0 if filename does include a dot,
> savePlot() will  not add the file type as an extension.  Thus my apparent
> redundancy in the file name.
>
> The problem I have is that the example command will substitute an unwanted
> character for â, yet if I use "File, save as, jpg ... " and type in a name
> containing the troublesome character, R saves the on-screen plot with that
> character in the name with no complaints.
>
> I have tried using iconv() with no success, as can be seen with the
> following code:
>
> file.name <- paste("diagnostic â vs a ", file.label, ".jpg", sep = "")
>
> iconv.List <- iconvlist()
>
> for(encoding in iconv.List) {
>
> print(iconv(file.name, "", encoding, ""))}
>
> So, here's the question:  How can I save, with a non-interactive R
command,
> an existing plot with the troublesome character in the file name?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
> Charles Annis, P.E.
>
> Charles.Annis at StatisticalEngineering.com
> phone: 561-352-9699
> eFax:  614-455-3265
> http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com
>  
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

-- 
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