R help - Jun 2004 - R 1.9.0, special characters in variable names.

Hello all,

I upgraded from R 1.8.1 to 1.9.0 (Windows XP), and spotted an odd thing.

The last three letters in the Swedish alphabet are ??, ?? and ??. (In case they
don't show correctly: they are a with a ring, a with two dots, and o with
two dots (HTML: å  ä ö).

When I use these as variable names in a data.frame, odd things happen:
In R 1.8.1, ?? (å) doesn't work while the others do.
In R 1.9.0, ?? (ö) doesn't work while the others do.

Please find examples below. It would be nice if all three could be used in
variable names. At least in Sweden :-)

Thanks...
Sixten.

#
# R 1.9.0: ?? is renamed to X.
#
> data.frame(a=1, ??=2, ??=3, ??=4)
  a ?? ?? X.
1 1 2 3  4
> version
         _              
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch     i386           
os       mingw32        
system   i386, mingw32  
status                  
major    1              
minor    9.0            
year     2004           
month    04             
day      12             
language R              
> 

#
# R 1.8.1: ?? is renamed to X.
#
> data.frame(a=1, ??=2, ??=3, ??=4)
  a X. ?? ??
1 1  2 3 4
> version
         _              
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch     i386           
os       mingw32        
system   i386, mingw32  
status                  
major    1              
minor    8.1            
year     2003           
month    11             
day      21             
language R          


#

This is a function of the OS set by your locale, and there is nothing we
can do about it.  It is done by the C call isalpha in do_makenames in
src/main/character.c.

My Windows XP machine in Swedish does accept all three, using the 
CRAN-compiled version of rw1091.exe, so something is up with yours.  
Sorry, can't help.

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Sixten Borg wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I upgraded from R 1.8.1 to 1.9.0 (Windows XP), and spotted an odd thing.
> 
> The last three letters in the Swedish alphabet are ??, ?? and ??. (In case
they don't show correctly: they are a with a ring, a with two dots, and o
with two dots (HTML: å  ä ö).
> 
> When I use these as variable names in a data.frame, odd things happen:
> In R 1.8.1, ?? (å) doesn't work while the others do.
> In R 1.9.0, ?? (ö) doesn't work while the others do.
> 
> Please find examples below. It would be nice if all three could be used in
variable names. At least in Sweden :-)
> 
> Thanks...
> Sixten.
> 
> #
> # R 1.9.0: ?? is renamed to X.
> #
> 
> > data.frame(a=1, ??=2, ??=3, ??=4)
>   a ?? ?? X.
> 1 1 2 3  4
> > version
>          _              
> platform i386-pc-mingw32
> arch     i386           
> os       mingw32        
> system   i386, mingw32  
> status                  
> major    1              
> minor    9.0            
> year     2004           
> month    04             
> day      12             
> language R              
> > 
> 
> 
> #
> # R 1.8.1: ?? is renamed to X.
> #
> 
> > data.frame(a=1, ??=2, ??=3, ??=4)
>   a X. ?? ??
> 1 1  2 3 4
> > version
>          _              
> platform i386-pc-mingw32
> arch     i386           
> os       mingw32        
> system   i386, mingw32  
> status                  
> major    1              
> minor    8.1            
> year     2003           
> month    11             
> day      21             
> language R          
> 
> 
> #
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> 
> 
-- 
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

"Sixten Borg" <sb at ihe.se> writes:
> Hello all,
> 
> I upgraded from R 1.8.1 to 1.9.0 (Windows XP), and spotted an odd thing.
> 
> The last three letters in the Swedish alphabet are ??, ?? and ??. (In case
they don't show correctly: they are a with a ring, a with two dots, and o
with two dots (HTML: &aring;  &auml; &ouml;).
> 
> When I use these as variable names in a data.frame, odd things happen:
> In R 1.8.1, ?? (&aring;) doesn't work while the others do.
> In R 1.9.0, ?? (&ouml;) doesn't work while the others do.
> 
> Please find examples below. It would be nice if all three could be used in
variable names. At least in Sweden :-)
I suspect this is an OS/locale issue rather than an R one -- we're at
the mercy of whatever the isprint function/macro returns for a given
locale. Works fine on Linux with LC_CTYPE=da_DK
> > data.frame(a=1, ??=2, ??=3, ??=4)
>   a ?? ?? X.
> 1 1 2 3  4
> data.frame(a=1, ??=2, ??=3, ??=4, ??=5, ??=6)
  a ?? ?? ?? ?? ??
1 1 2 3 4 5 6

(1.9.0 on RH8)

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907

"Sixten Borg" <sb at ihe.se> writes:
When I use these as variable names in a data.frame, odd things
happen:
> data.frame(a=1, ??=2, ??=3, ??=4)
>   a ?? ?? X.
> 1 1 2 3  4
 ---- 
I your variables only include numbers (or only characters), this works

XX <-  cbind(a=1, ??=2, ??=3, ??=4, ??=5, ??=6)
> XX
     a ?? ?? ?? ?? ??
[1,] 1 2 3 4 5 6
But this doesn't
> data.frame(XX)
  a ?? ?? X. X?? X.
1 1 2 3  4  5  6

i.e. it is the data.frame function that manages to mess up the variable names
for us Windows users