R devel - Jan 2010 - order() fails on a chr object of class "AsIs" with "\265" in it

Here's an example (session info at the end).
>  tmpv <- c('\265g/L','Bq/L')
>  order(tmpv)
[1] 2 1
>  tmpv <- I(tmpv)
>  order(tmpv)
Error in if (xi > xj) 1L else -1L : missing value where TRUE/FALSE
needed
>  foov <- gsub('\265','',tmpv)
>  order(foov)
[1] 2 1
>  str(tmpv)
Class 'AsIs'  chr [1:2] "\265g/L"
"Bq/L"
>  str(foov)
Class 'AsIs'  chr [1:2] "g/L" "Bq/L"

I can easily work around this in my scripts, but shouldn't order() 
succeed with such an object?
(I suppose this could be Mac-specific, but I'm assuming it's not...)

For context:
The character "\265" causes the Greek letter mu to be displayed in 
various output devices. For example, the character vector eventually 
gets written to an html file, which when displayed in Firefox (Mac) 
is displayed as Greek mu. Also in Excel 2004 (Mac).

I first wrote these scripts 6 years ago, when "\265" was a way I 
could find to display the Greek mu in output text files of various 
kinds. They worked as recently as 3 months ago. Maybe there's a 
better way now to display a mu in text-based contexts?

>  sessionInfo()
R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14)
i386-apple-darwin8.11.1

locale:
[1] C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

Thanks
-Don
-- 
--------------------------------------
Don MacQueen
Environmental Protection Department
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA, USA
925-423-1062

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010, Don MacQueen wrote:
> Here's an example (session info at the end).
>
>>  tmpv <- c('\265g/L','Bq/L')
>>  order(tmpv)
> [1] 2 1
>>  tmpv <- I(tmpv)
>>  order(tmpv)
> Error in if (xi > xj) 1L else -1L : missing value where TRUE/FALSE
needed
>>  foov <- gsub('\265','',tmpv)
>>  order(foov)
> [1] 2 1
>>  str(tmpv)
> Class 'AsIs'  chr [1:2] "\265g/L" "Bq/L"
>>  str(foov)
> Class 'AsIs'  chr [1:2] "g/L" "Bq/L"
>
> I can easily work around this in my scripts, but shouldn't order()
succeed
> with such an object?
Not in the C locale.  There is no pre-defined ordering for non-ASCII 
characters in that locale and the string is invalid in a strict C 
locale.
> (I suppose this could be Mac-specific, but I'm assuming it's
not...)
No, but the handling of invalid strings in C is OS-specific.
> For context:
> The character "\265" causes the Greek letter mu to be displayed
in various
> output devices. For example, the character vector eventually gets written
to
> an html file, which when displayed in Firefox (Mac) is displayed as Greek
mu.
> Also in Excel 2004 (Mac).
>
> I first wrote these scripts 6 years ago, when "\265" was a way I
could find
> to display the Greek mu in output text files of various kinds. They worked
as
> recently as 3 months ago. Maybe there's a better way now to display a
mu in
> text-based contexts?
Use UTF-8 and Unicode \u03BC 
(http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/greek.html).

The issue is that you need a xtfrm method for 'AsIs': it falls back to 
comparisons via .gt and those (correctly) fail.

xtfrm.AsIs <- function(x) xtfrm(unclass(x))

would keep get you going until you fix the scripts.
>
>>  sessionInfo()
> R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14)
> i386-apple-darwin8.11.1
>
> locale:
> [1] C
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> Thanks
> -Don
> -- 
> --------------------------------------
> Don MacQueen
> Environmental Protection Department
> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
> Livermore, CA, USA
> 925-423-1062
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
-- 
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