[R-SIG-Mac] [R] data frames with å, ä, and ö (=non-ASCII-characters) from windows to mac os x

[David Winsemius]

Reading the help page for Sys.get/set/locale:

"Attempts to change the character set (by Sys.setlocale("LC_TYPE", ),  
if that implies a different character set) during a session may not  
work and are likely to lead to some confusion.
Value
A character string of length one describing the locale in use (after  
setting for Sys.setlocale), or an empty character string if the  
current locale settings are invalid or NULL if locale information is  
unavailable.
For category = "LC_ALL" the details of the string are system-specific:  
it might be a single locale name or a set of locale names separated by  
"/"(Solaris, Mac OS X) or ";" (Windows, Linux). For portability, it is  
best to query categories individually: it is not necessarily the case  
that the result of foo <- Sys.getlocale() can be used in  
Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", locale = foo).'

I interpret that as saying that if you use "LC_ALL", then you need to  
pass a character string to Sys.setlocale() that is constructed  
properly for a Mac and that it might have "/"'s. And you need to do it  
at the beginning of a session. And that it will be ignored, as you say  
"not do anything" if not precisely correct. This is what Sys.getlocale  
returns on mine:

"en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8"



Hope this helps;

David Winsemius





On Jan 16, 2009, at 8:44 AM, David Winsemius wrote:

> It displays sensibly (at least I think so, not being a reader of any  
> Scandinavian language)  on my Mac (10.5.6).
>
> snip
> >
> > sessionInfo()
> R version 2.8.1 Patched (2009-01-07 r47515)
> i386-apple-darwin9.6.0
>
> locale:
> en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8
>
> (An etiquette note: It is considered impolite to cross post to both  
> the r-help and r-sig-mac lists.)
>
> -- 
> David Winsemius
>
> On Jan 16, 2009, at 8:13 AM, Gustaf Rydevik wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> I ran into this issue previously and managed to solve it, but I've
>> forgotten how and am getting frustrated...
>>
>> I have a data frame (see below) with scandinavian characters in R
>> (2.7.1) running on a Win Xp-computer. I save the data frame in an
>> RData-file on a usb stick, and load() it in R (2.8.0) running on OS X
>> 10.5. Now the name of the data frame and all factor labels with
>> scandinavian characters are scrambled. How do I make R in OS X read  
>> my
>> data frame?
>>> From what I've managed to find in the list archives and the FAQ I  
>>> either
>> 1) run
>> Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL","en_US.UTF-8") ### Doesn't change anything
>> or
>> 2) run
>> defaults write org.R-project.R force.LANG en_US.UTF-8
>> in the terminal, which doesn't help either.
>> I must admit that I couldn't quite follow what documentation i found
>> on locales, so I might have messed up somewhere along the line.
>>
>> Many thanks in advance for your help!
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Gustaf
>>
>>
>> --------
>>
>> Länkarta <-
>> structure(list(LANKOD = structure(c(11L, 19L, 10L, 13L, 21L,
>> 7L, 9L, 18L, 8L, 3L, 16L, 6L, 5L, 4L, 15L, 2L, 20L, 17L, 1L,
>> 14L, 12L), .Label = c("AB", "AC", "BD", "C", "D", "E", "F", "G",
>> "H", "I", "K", "M", "N", "O", "S", "T", "U", "W", "X", "Y", "Z"
>> ), class = "factor"), Län = structure(c(1L, 4L, 3L, 5L, 6L, 7L,
>> 8L, 2L, 9L, 10L, 20L, 21L, 13L, 14L, 15L, 16L, 17L, 18L, 12L,
>> 19L, 11L), .Label = c("Blekinge län", "Dalarnas län", "Gotlands län",
>> "Gävleborgs län", "Hallands län", "Jämtlands län", "Jönköpings län",
>> "Kalmar län", "Kronobergs län", "Norrbottens län", "Skåne län",
>> "Stockholms län", "Södermanlands län", "Uppsala län", "Värmlands  
>> län",
>> "Västerbottens län", "Västernorrlands län", "Västmanlands län",
>> "Västra Götalands län", "Örebro län", "Östergötlands län"), class =
>> "factor")), .Names = c("LANKOD",
>> "Län"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c("0", "1", "2", "3",
>> "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10", "11", "12", "13", "14", "15",
>> "16", "17", "18", "19", "20"))
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Gustaf Rydevik, M.Sci.
>> tel: +46(0)703 051 451
>> address:Essingetorget 40,112 66 Stockholm, SE
>> skype:gustaf_rydevik
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> 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.
>
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