[R] what's this character?

[John]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:44:59 -0800 (PST)
"Shi, Tao" <shidaxia at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi list,
> 
> I've encounter this problem (see below).  I know it's particularly
> R-related and it's easy to get by but it still bothers me a lot.  
> 
> 
> It looks the last character of "N.C. " is a space to me, but it's
> clearly not.  Can someone tell me a way to figure out what character
> is in the last position.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Tao

In the sample you provide it is HEX 20 which is ASCII for "space."  So
either, it really is a space, or it didn't copy in your message.  I
would suggest copying the string and pasting into a hex editor. 

Doing that with the "N.C. " from your message yields:

22 4E 2E 43 2E 20 22

The "20" is the ASCII "space" character.  Just possibly, if you are
using a file saved in a unicode format, it could be a "no-break space"
- Unicode point U+00A0, or UTF-8 "c2 a0".  Good luck.

JWDougherty