Hi Matt,
Thanks for having a look at this.
I just spent some time looking around and couldn't find any R function to
decode  decimal HTML code.

Do you (or someone else on the list) knows how to program this sort of
thing? (is there a formula for the translation?


p.s:
For it to work on my end I added the encoding parameter:
readLines("http://biostatmatt.com/temp/Hebrew-decoded", warn=FALSE,
encoding= "UTF-8")

p.p.s: The Hebrew word I used means "peace"

Cheers,
Tal


----------------Contact
Details:-------------------------------------------------------
Contact me: Tal.Galili@gmail.com |  972-52-7275845
Read me: www.talgalili.com (Hebrew) | www.biostatistics.co.il (Hebrew) |
www.r-statistics.com (English)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 8:38 PM, Matt Shotwell <shotwelm@musc.edu> wrote:

> Tal,
>
> It looks like the data you received has HTML special hex characters.
> That is, '&#x5E9;' is just an ASCII HTML representation of a hex
> character. It's not encoded in a special manner.
>
> The trick is to substitute the HTML encoded hex character for its binary
> representation, or "decode" the character. I don't know of any R
> function that does this, but there are web services, for example:
> http://www.hashemian.com/tools/html-url-encode-decode.php
>
> I decoded your file using this service and posted it on my website. You
> can see the difference by running:
>
> readLines("http://biostatmatt.com/temp/Hebrew-original", warn=FALSE)
>
> readLines("http://biostatmatt.com/temp/Hebrew-decoded", warn=FALSE)
>
> The second should display the Hebrew characters correctly (it does in my
> terminal). The next thing to think about is how to automate this in R
> without using the web service... We may need to write an HTMLDecode
> function if there isn't one already.
>
> By the way, what's the Hebrew text in English?
>
> Best,
> Matt
>
>
> On Thu, 2010-12-09 at 12:21 -0500, Tal Galili wrote:
> > I am bumping this question in the hopes that someone might be able to
> > advise.
> > This Hebrew and R business is not as smooth as I had hoped...
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Tal
> >
> > Older massage:
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Tal Galili <tal.galili@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Hello all,
> > >
> > > # I am trying to read the text in this URL:
> > > u <-
> > >
> http://google.com/complete/search?output=toolbar&q=%d7%a9%d7%9c%d7%95%d7%9d
> > > # By using this command:
> > > readLines(u)
> > >
> > > And no matter what variation I tried, I keep getting this output:
> > > [1] "<?xml version=\"1.0\"?><toplevel><CompleteSuggestion><suggestion
> > > data=\"&#x5E9;&#x5DC;&#x5D5;&#x5DD;\"/><   (etc...)
> > >
> >
> >
> > > Instead of this output:
> > > <?xml version="1.0"?><toplevel><CompleteSuggestion><suggestion
> data="שלום
> > > "/><num_queries
> int="16800000"/></CompleteSuggestion><CompleteSuggestion><suggestion
> > > data="שלום חנוך"/><num_queries int="232000"/></CompleteSuggestion>
> > > <CompleteSuggestion><suggestion data="שלום עליכם"/
> > > (etc....)
> > >
> > >
> >
> > > I tried:
> > >   readLines(u, encoding= "latin1")
> > >   readLines(u, encoding= "UTF-8")
> > > And also changing Sys.setlocale:
> > >   Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "Hebrew") # must be done for Hebrew to work.
> > >   Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "English") # must be done for Hebrew to work.
> > >
> > > Are there any more options I could try to get this text properly
> encoded?
> > >
> > > Thanks!
> > > Tal
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----------------Contact
> > > Details:-------------------------------------------------------
> > > Contact me: Tal.Galili@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]]
> >
>
> --
> Matthew S. Shotwell
> Graduate Student
> Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
> Medical University of South Carolina
>
>

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

