[R] How to read.table with “Hebrew” column names (in R)?

William Dunlap wdunlap at tibco.com
Fri Mar 19 00:19:24 CET 2010


My test was on Windows XP.  On an old Linux distro
I have access to (Ubuntu 8.04.3 hardy) it does work
better, although the putty terminal emulator (on
the Windows side) reverses all the lines
containing any Hebrew text (pushing them against
the right edge of the terminal window).

When I look at your output in Outlook I also
see reversed strings and lines, but that is probably
a Windows problem.

Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ista Zahn [mailto:istazahn at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 4:01 PM
> To: William Dunlap
> Cc: Tal Galili; r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] How to read.table with “Hebrew” column names (in R)?
> 
> Seems to work fine on my machine:
> 
> > data1 <- read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt",
> +       header = TRUE, sep = "\t", encoding="UTF-8", 
> check.names=FALSE)
> > data1
>   אחת שתיים שלוש
> 1  12    97    6
> 2 123   354   44
> 3   6     1    3
> > colnames(data1)
> [1] "אחת"   "שתיים" "שלוש"
> > colnames(data1)[1]
> [1] "אחת"
> > strsplit(colnames(data1)[1], "")[[1]][1]
> [1] "א"
> > data1[,"שתיים"]
> [1]  97 354   1
> > lm(`שתיים` ~ `שלוש`, data=data1)
> 
> Call:
> lm(formula = שתיים ~ שלוש, data = data1)
> 
> Coefficients:
> (Intercept)         שלוש
>      12.406        7.826
> 
> > sessionInfo()
> R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14)
> i686-pc-linux-gnu
> 
> locale:
>  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
>  [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
>  [5] LC_MONETARY=C              LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
>  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
>  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> > Sys.info()
>                            sysname                            release
>                            "Linux"            "2.6.31.12-0.1-default"
>                            version                           nodename
> "#1 SMP 2010-01-27 08:20:11 +0100"                       "linux-46fj"
>                            machine                              login
>                             "i686"                          "unknown"
>                               user
>                            "izahn"
> >
> 
> -Ista
> 
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 6:42 PM, William Dunlap 
> <wdunlap at tibco.com> wrote:
> > I tried this on R 2.11.0 unstable (2010-03-07 r51225) using
> > encoding="UTF-8" and check.names=FALSE in read.table().
> > It seemed to basically work, except that the 
> data.frame/matrix printing
> > routine wants to print the Unicode codes for the characters
> > in the names:
> >
> >   > data1 <- read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt",
> >       header = TRUE, sep = "\t", encoding="UTF-8", 
> check.names=FALSE)
> >   > data1 # I see Unicode codes, presumably the correct ones
> >     <U+05D0><U+05D7><U+05EA> 
> <U+05E9><U+05EA><U+05D9><U+05D9><U+05DD>
> >   1                       12                                
>        97
> >   2                      123                                
>       354
> >   3                        6                                
>         1
> >     <U+05E9><U+05DC><U+05D5><U+05E9>
> >   1                                6
> >   2                               44
> >   3                                3
> >   > colnames(data1) # I see Hebrew strings (in R the first 
> starts with aleph)
> >   [1] "אחת"   "שתיים" "שלוש"
> >   > colnames(data)[1]
> >   [1] "אחת"
> >   > strsplit(colnames(data)[1], "")[[1]][1]
> >   [1] "א"
> >   > data1[,"שתיים"]
> >   [1]  97 354   1
> >
> > I'm writing this in Outlook in the English (American) locale
> > and the copy-n-paste from the R gui window to the Outlook window
> > of the Hebrew letters reversed the whole line of them (reversing
> > the characters in each name and the names in the line), which I
> > why I showed a subset of the names and a substring of the 
> first name.
> >
> > However, when I try to use lm() with this data.frame then I run into
> > trouble, which is probably the same problem as I see in the
> > data.frame printing:
> >
> >   > lm(`שתיים` ~ `שלוש`)
> >   Error: \uxxxx sequences not supported inside backticks (line 1)
> >
> > Bill Dunlap
> > Spotfire, TIBCO Software
> > wdunlap tibco.com
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org
> >> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Tal Galili
> >> Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 2:41 PM
> >> To: r-help at r-project.org
> >> Subject: [R] How to read.table with “Hebrew” column names (in R)?
> >>
> >> (I am reposting this question after a few months without a
> >> solution...)
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I am trying to read a .txt file, with Hebrew column names, 
> but without
> >> success.
> >>
> >> I uploaded an example file to: 
> http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt
> >>
> >> And tried the command:
> >>
> >> read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt", header =
> >> T, sep = "\t")
> >>
> >> This returns me with:
> >>
> >>   X.....ª X...ª...... X...Å“....
> >> 1      12          97         6
> >> 2     123         354        44
> >> 3       6           1         3
> >>
> >> Instead of:
> >>
> >> × ×—×ª ×©×ª×™×™×    ×©×œ×•×©
> >> 12  97  6
> >> 123 354 44
> >> 6   1   3
> >>
> >>
> >>  Trying to use something like:
> >>
> >> read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt",fileEncodin
> >> g ="iso8859-8")
> >>
> >> Has resulted in:
> >>
> >>  V1
> >> 1  ?
> >> Warning messages:
> >> 1: In read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt", 
> fileEncoding
> >> = "iso8859-8") :
> >>
> >>   invalid input found on input connection
> >> 'http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt'
> >> 2: In read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt", 
> fileEncoding
> >> = "iso8859-8") :
> >>
> >>   incomplete final line found by readTableHeader on
> >> 'http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt'
> >>
> >> While also trying this:
> >>
> >> Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "en_US.UTF-8")
> >>
> >> Or this:
> >>
> >> Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL",
> >> "en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8")
> >>
> >> Get's me this:
> >>
> >> [1] ""
> >> Warning message:
> >> In Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "en_US.UTF-8") :
> >>
> >>   OS reports request to set locale to "en_US.UTF-8" cannot 
> be honored
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> My output for:
> >>
> >> l10n_info()
> >>
> >> Is:
> >>
> >> $MBCS
> >> [1] FALSE
> >>
> >> $`UTF-8`
> >> [1] FALSE
> >>
> >> $`Latin-1`
> >> [1] TRUE
> >>
> >> $codepage
> >> [1] 1252
> >>
> >> And for:
> >>
> >> Sys.getlocale()
> >>
> >> Is:
> >>
> >> [1] "LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United
> >> States.1252;LC_MONETARY=English_United
> >> States.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United States.1252"
> >>
> >> Finally, here is the > sessionInfo()
> >>
> >> R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14)
> >>
> >> i386-pc-mingw32
> >>
> >> locale:
> >> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1255  LC_CTYPE=English_United
> >> States.1252    LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
> >> [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
> >>
> >> attached base packages:
> >> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  
methods   base
> >>
> >> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> >> [1] tools_2.10.1
> >>
> >>
> >> Any suggestion or clarification will be appreciated.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Best,
> >>
> >> Tal
> >>
> >> ----------------Contact
> >> Details:-------------------------------------------------------
> >> Contact me: Tal.Galili at gmail.com |  972-52-7275845
> >> Read me: www.talgalili.com (Hebrew) | www.biostatistics.co.il
> >> (Hebrew) |
> >> www.r-statistics.com (English)
> >> --------------------------------------------------------------
> >> --------------------------------
> >>
> >>       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >>
> >>
> > ______________________________________________
> > 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.
> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Ista Zahn
> Graduate student
> University of Rochester
> Department of Clinical and Social Psychology
> http://yourpsyche.org
> 


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