R devel - Mar 2005 - minor iconvlist() bug in r-devel

This is on r-devel from 2005-03-15. iconvlist() uses (at least some of 
the time)

icfile <- system.file("iconvlist", package = "utils")

which looks like 

"""
The following list contain all the coded character sets known.  This 
does not necessarily mean that all combinations of these names can be 
used for the FROM and TO command line parameters.  One coded character
set can be listed with several different names (aliases).

  437//
500//
.
.
.
"""

which leads to 
> tail(iconvlist(), n = 40)
 [1] "WS2"          "YU"           "all"         
"all"          "and"
 [6] "be"           "be"           "can"         
"can"      "character"
[11] "character"    "coded"        "coded"    
"combinations" "command"
[16] "contain"      "different"    "does"        
"following"    "for"
[21] "known."       "line"         "list"        
"listed"       "mean"
[26] "names"        "names"        "necessarily" 
"not"          "of"
[31] "parameters."  "set"          "sets"        
"several"      "that"
[36] "the"          "the"          "these"       
"used"         "with"

A possible fix seems to be to replace

    ext <- readLines(icfile)

by 

    ext <- grep("/$", readLines(icfile), value = TRUE)

but I don't know if that's guaranteed to work. 

-Deepayan

That file is created by

$(top_builddir)/library/$(pkg)/iconvlist: most
         @iconv -l > $@ 2> /dev/null || touch $@

What version of iconv -l is that produces such a list?  That in glibc 
2.3.4 does not produce the header when redirected.

Your fix is not safe: iconv in libiconv produces items separated by space 
or newline.  Looks like we will have to work harder to distinguish the 
two.

Brian


On Wed, 16 Mar 2005, Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
>
> This is on r-devel from 2005-03-15. iconvlist() uses (at least some of
> the time)
>
> icfile <- system.file("iconvlist", package =
"utils")
>
> which looks like
>
> """
> The following list contain all the coded character sets known.  This
> does not necessarily mean that all combinations of these names can be
> used for the FROM and TO command line parameters.  One coded character
> set can be listed with several different names (aliases).
>
>  437//
> 500//
> .
> .
> .
> """
>
> which leads to
>
>> tail(iconvlist(), n = 40)
> [1] "WS2"          "YU"           "all"      
"all"          "and"
> [6] "be"           "be"           "can"      
"can"      "character"
> [11] "character"    "coded"        "coded"   
"combinations" "command"
> [16] "contain"      "different"    "does"    
"following"    "for"
> [21] "known."       "line"         "list"    
"listed"       "mean"
> [26] "names"        "names"       
"necessarily"  "not"          "of"
> [31] "parameters."  "set"          "sets"    
"several"      "that"
> [36] "the"          "the"          "these"   
"used"         "with"
>
> A possible fix seems to be to replace
>
>    ext <- readLines(icfile)
>
> by
>
>    ext <- grep("/$", readLines(icfile), value = TRUE)
>
> but I don't know if that's guaranteed to work.
>
> -Deepayan
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
>
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@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