[R] trouble with character \u00e2

[Prof Brian Ripley]

That also works without a hitch on my box, even in vanilla 2.7.2.  What 
exactly is in file.label as given by

charToRaw(file.label)
Encoding(file.label)

?  It should be in UTF-8, and so should

paste("diagnostic â vs a ", file.label, ".jpg", sep = "")

It looks like the latter is not being treated as UTF-8 on your system (see 
what Encoding() says on its value).

On Wed, 8 Oct 2008, Charles Annis, P.E. wrote:

> 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
>
>

-- 
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