R devel - Feb 2019 - Bug Report: read.table with UTF-8 encoded file imports infinity symbol as Integer 8

I can reproduce this behavior on my Windows 10 system in RGui (cp1252): 
when I paste the Unicode infinity symbol into the console, it is treated 
as number 8. This is caused by Windows "best fit" default behavior in 
conversion of unicode characters to characters in the current native 
encoding: at some point in the past, 8 has been chosen as a good fit for 
infinity in Windows. In my scenario, the conversion is invoked by RGui 
before returning the input to the main R loop, even before the input 
gets to the parser. In principle, we could change this particular 
conversion in RGui to avoid the substitution. RGui uses "\uxxxx"
escapes
to pass characters that cannot be represented, this is why e.g. the 
Cyrillic Zhe \u0436 worked, so we could tell Windows not to do the 
substitution and pass "\u221e" for Infinity, and then the string after
being processed by the parser will be represented in UTF-8 inside R and 
could be e.g. printed by the RGui console. That is something that could 
be considered, but it will not solve the main problem and it may 
actually cause trouble to users who are used to such substitutions 
(especially when the substitutions are more intuitive, but, that may be 
a matter of opinion).

The main problem is that in normal use, sooner or later R will get to 
the point when it will need to do the conversion to native encoding, and 
in some context where "\uxxxx" escapes will not be possible. One
cannot
reliably work with strings in R that cannot be represented in the 
current native encoding (except when one knows precisely how to avoid 
the conversion in some specific task, but that may be brittle; so the 
best-fit substitution might in principle help here). This problem does 
not exist on Unix/macOS systems where the current native encoding is 
UTF-8 these days, so today it only exists on Windows where UTF-8 cannot 
be the current native encoding. As has been discussed before, even 
though we could rewrite in principle all calls to Windows API to use 
Unicode and have all strings in UTF-8 in R, we would still have problems 
when interfacing with packages that assume strings are in current native 
encoding (without checking), so this problem won't be easy to fix.

Best,
Tomas

On 2/7/19 3:10 PM, Daniel Possenriede wrote:
> There seems to be something odd with "?" on Windows (and not only
with
> read.table)
> In native encoding (cp-1252 in my case), "?" gets converted to
"8"
>
> x <-  "?"
> Encoding(x)
> #> [1] "unknown"
> print(x)
> #> [1] "8"
> charToRaw(x)
> #> [1] 38
>
> "?" is indeed "8"
>
> identical(x, "8")
> #> [1] TRUE
>
> Everything seems fine if  "?" is UTF-8 encoded.
>
> y <- "\u221E"
> Encoding(y)
> #> [1] "UTF-8"
> print(y)
> #> [1]  "?"
> charToRaw(y)
> #> [1] e2 88 9e
>
> Unless the string is converted back to native encoding.
>
> format(y)
> #> [1] "8"
>
> This ought to be "<U+221E>", equivalently to
>
> format("?")
> #> [1] "<U+221D>"
>
> Session Info:
>
> si <- sessionInfo()
> si$running
> #> [1] "Windows 10 x64 (build 17134)"
> si$R.version$version.string
> #> [1] "R version 3.5.2 (2018-12-20)"
> si$locale
> #> [1]
>
"LC_COLLATE=German_Germany.1252;LC_CTYPE=German_Germany.1252;LC_MONETARY=German_Germany.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=German_Germany.1252"
>
>
>
> Am Do., 7. Feb. 2019 um 14:33 Uhr schrieb David Byrne <
> david.byrne222 at gmail.com>:
>
>> I can confirm that it doesn't happen on Ubuntu 18.04.1 so Peter is
>> most likely correct; it looks like its Windows specific.
>>
>> On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 at 12:55, peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>> This doesn't seem to be happening on MacOS, neither in Terminal
nor
>> RStudio, (R 3.5.1, R-devel, R-patched). So probably Windows specific.
>>> -pd
>>>
>>>> On 7 Feb 2019, at 11:17 , David Byrne <david.byrne222 at
gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> Bug
>>>> Using read.table(file, encoding="UTF-8") to import a
UTF-8 encoded
>>>> file containing the infinity symbol (' ? ') results in
the infinity
>>>> symbol imported as the number 8. Other Unicode characters seem
>>>> unaffected, example, Zhe: ?
>>>>
>>>> Expected Behavior:
>>>> The imported data.frame should represent the infinity symbol as
the
>>>> expected 'Inf' so that normal mathematical operations
can be processed
>>>>
>>>> Stack Overflow Post:
>>>> I created a question on Stack Overflow where one other member
was able
>>>> to reproduce the same issues I was having. This question can be
found
>>>> at:
>>>>
>>
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54522196/r-read-table-with-utf-8-encoded-file-reads-infinity-symbol-as-8-int
>>>> Method to Reproduce - 1:
>>>> A simple method to reproduce this issues is to use R-Studio: In
the
>>>> console, type the following:
>>>>> read.table(text=" ?", encoding="UTF-8")
>>>> The result should be a data.frame with a single value of
'8'
>>>>
>>>> Repeating the same with ? Results in correct expected behavior
>>>>
>>>> Method to Reproduce - 2:
>>>> Create a .csv file containing the infinity and Zhe characters
(I have
>>>> attached the file for convenience, hopefully it is no rejected
by your
>>>> email service). Launch an interactive session using
>>>>
>>>>> r --vanilla
>>>> Enter the following statement taking care to replace the
>>>> <path-to-file> with the appropriate one:
>>>>
>>>>>
read.table("<path-to-file>/unicode_chars.csv",
sep=",",
>> encoding="UTF-8")
>>>>
>>>> This should result in a two element data.frame; the first being
the
>>>> incorrect value of 8 with an additional <U+FEFF> and the
second the
>>>> correct value of Zhe.
>>>>
>>>> Note the additional <U+FEFF> prefixed to the front of the
'8'. This
>>>> appears to be a hidden character for the purposes of letting
editors
>>>> know the encoding. The following link has some explanation
however, it
>>>> states this is caused by excel. The file I created was done so
using
>>>> notepad and not Excel.
>>>>
>>>>
>>
https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-quick-tale-about-feff-the-invisible-character-cd25cd4630e7
>>>> System Details:
>>>> OS:
>>>>> Windows 10.0.17134 Build 17134
>>>>
>>>> R Version:
>>>>> platform       x86_64-w64-mingw32
>>>>> arch           x86_64
>>>>> os             mingw32
>>>>> system         x86_64, mingw32
>>>>> status
>>>>> major          3
>>>>> minor          4.1
>>>>> year           2017
>>>>> month          06
>>>>> day            30
>>>>> svn rev        72865
>>>>> language       R
>>>>> version.string R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
>>>>> nickname       Single Candle
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>> --
>>> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
>>> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
>>> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
>>> Phone: (+45)38153501
>>> Office: A 4.23
>>> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Fortune nomination...
> On 8 Feb 2019, at 13:07 , Tomas Kalibera <tomas.kalibera at
gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> This is caused by Windows "best fit" default behavior in
conversion of unicode characters to characters in the current native encoding:
at some point in the past, 8 has been chosen as a good fit for infinity in
Windows.
-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Office: A 4.23
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com

Tomas,
> In my scenario, the conversion is invoked by RGui before returning the
input to the main R loop, even before the input gets to the parser. In
principle, we could change this particular conversion in RGui to avoid the
substitution.

Not sure whether I am missing something here, but I used RStudio for my
examples (I should have said) and David's mentioned RStudio as well, so it
does not seem to be a problem with RGui only.

Another example for the "best fit" behaviour seems to be "?"
("\u03A3", greek capital letter sigma, not "\u2211", n-ary
summation):

print("?")
#> [1] "S"

Again with cp1252 on Windows 10, R 3.5.2, RStudio 1.2.1256 preview.
> even though we could rewrite in principle all calls to Windows API to use
Unicode and have all strings in UTF-8 in R, we would still have problems
when interfacing with packages that assume strings are in current native
encoding (without checking), so this problem won't be easy to fix.

Since I regularly encounter the reverse problem, i.e. packages that assume
strings are in UTF-8 encoding without checking (which isn't very
surprising, assuming that most package developers develop on Unix/macOS
systems), I'd say, "rip of the bandaid rather sooner than later".
Obviously
I don't know how many bugs would surface in packages if R for Windows'
native encoding were to switch to UTF-8, but these bugs would only be
transitory, I suppose. Whereas there is a steady inflow of
assume-UTF-8-encoding-bugs in new packages and functions with the current
situation.

Best,
Daniel


Am Fr., 8. Feb. 2019 um 13:07 Uhr schrieb Tomas Kalibera <
tomas.kalibera at gmail.com>:
> I can reproduce this behavior on my Windows 10 system in RGui (cp1252):
> when I paste the Unicode infinity symbol into the console, it is treated
> as number 8. This is caused by Windows "best fit" default
behavior in
> conversion of unicode characters to characters in the current native
> encoding: at some point in the past, 8 has been chosen as a good fit for
> infinity in Windows. In my scenario, the conversion is invoked by RGui
> before returning the input to the main R loop, even before the input
> gets to the parser. In principle, we could change this particular
> conversion in RGui to avoid the substitution. RGui uses "\uxxxx"
escapes
> to pass characters that cannot be represented, this is why e.g. the
> Cyrillic Zhe \u0436 worked, so we could tell Windows not to do the
> substitution and pass "\u221e" for Infinity, and then the string
after
> being processed by the parser will be represented in UTF-8 inside R and
> could be e.g. printed by the RGui console. That is something that could
> be considered, but it will not solve the main problem and it may
> actually cause trouble to users who are used to such substitutions
> (especially when the substitutions are more intuitive, but, that may be
> a matter of opinion).
>
> The main problem is that in normal use, sooner or later R will get to
> the point when it will need to do the conversion to native encoding, and
> in some context where "\uxxxx" escapes will not be possible. One
cannot
> reliably work with strings in R that cannot be represented in the
> current native encoding (except when one knows precisely how to avoid
> the conversion in some specific task, but that may be brittle; so the
> best-fit substitution might in principle help here). This problem does
> not exist on Unix/macOS systems where the current native encoding is
> UTF-8 these days, so today it only exists on Windows where UTF-8 cannot
> be the current native encoding. As has been discussed before, even
> though we could rewrite in principle all calls to Windows API to use
> Unicode and have all strings in UTF-8 in R, we would still have problems
> when interfacing with packages that assume strings are in current native
> encoding (without checking), so this problem won't be easy to fix.
>
> Best,
> Tomas
>
> On 2/7/19 3:10 PM, Daniel Possenriede wrote:
> > There seems to be something odd with "?" on Windows (and not
only with
> > read.table)
> > In native encoding (cp-1252 in my case), "?" gets converted
to "8"
> >
> > x <-  "?"
> > Encoding(x)
> > #> [1] "unknown"
> > print(x)
> > #> [1] "8"
> > charToRaw(x)
> > #> [1] 38
> >
> > "?" is indeed "8"
> >
> > identical(x, "8")
> > #> [1] TRUE
> >
> > Everything seems fine if  "?" is UTF-8 encoded.
> >
> > y <- "\u221E"
> > Encoding(y)
> > #> [1] "UTF-8"
> > print(y)
> > #> [1]  "?"
> > charToRaw(y)
> > #> [1] e2 88 9e
> >
> > Unless the string is converted back to native encoding.
> >
> > format(y)
> > #> [1] "8"
> >
> > This ought to be "<U+221E>", equivalently to
> >
> > format("?")
> > #> [1] "<U+221D>"
> >
> > Session Info:
> >
> > si <- sessionInfo()
> > si$running
> > #> [1] "Windows 10 x64 (build 17134)"
> > si$R.version$version.string
> > #> [1] "R version 3.5.2 (2018-12-20)"
> > si$locale
> > #> [1]
> >
>
"LC_COLLATE=German_Germany.1252;LC_CTYPE=German_Germany.1252;LC_MONETARY=German_Germany.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=German_Germany.1252"
> >
> >
> >
> > Am Do., 7. Feb. 2019 um 14:33 Uhr schrieb David Byrne <
> > david.byrne222 at gmail.com>:
> >
> >> I can confirm that it doesn't happen on Ubuntu 18.04.1 so
Peter is
> >> most likely correct; it looks like its Windows specific.
> >>
> >> On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 at 12:55, peter dalgaard <pdalgd at
gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> This doesn't seem to be happening on MacOS, neither in
Terminal nor
> >> RStudio, (R 3.5.1, R-devel, R-patched). So probably Windows
specific.
> >>> -pd
> >>>
> >>>> On 7 Feb 2019, at 11:17 , David Byrne <david.byrne222
at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>>> Bug
> >>>> Using read.table(file, encoding="UTF-8") to
import a UTF-8 encoded
> >>>> file containing the infinity symbol (' ? ')
results in the infinity
> >>>> symbol imported as the number 8. Other Unicode characters
seem
> >>>> unaffected, example, Zhe: ?
> >>>>
> >>>> Expected Behavior:
> >>>> The imported data.frame should represent the infinity
symbol as the
> >>>> expected 'Inf' so that normal mathematical
operations can be processed
> >>>>
> >>>> Stack Overflow Post:
> >>>> I created a question on Stack Overflow where one other
member was able
> >>>> to reproduce the same issues I was having. This question
can be found
> >>>> at:
> >>>>
> >>
>
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54522196/r-read-table-with-utf-8-encoded-file-reads-infinity-symbol-as-8-int
> >>>> Method to Reproduce - 1:
> >>>> A simple method to reproduce this issues is to use
R-Studio: In the
> >>>> console, type the following:
> >>>>> read.table(text=" ?",
encoding="UTF-8")
> >>>> The result should be a data.frame with a single value of
'8'
> >>>>
> >>>> Repeating the same with ? Results in correct expected
behavior
> >>>>
> >>>> Method to Reproduce - 2:
> >>>> Create a .csv file containing the infinity and Zhe
characters (I have
> >>>> attached the file for convenience, hopefully it is no
rejected by your
> >>>> email service). Launch an interactive session using
> >>>>
> >>>>> r --vanilla
> >>>> Enter the following statement taking care to replace the
> >>>> <path-to-file> with the appropriate one:
> >>>>
> >>>>>
read.table("<path-to-file>/unicode_chars.csv",
sep=",",
> >> encoding="UTF-8")
> >>>>
> >>>> This should result in a two element data.frame; the first
being the
> >>>> incorrect value of 8 with an additional <U+FEFF> and
the second the
> >>>> correct value of Zhe.
> >>>>
> >>>> Note the additional <U+FEFF> prefixed to the front
of the '8'. This
> >>>> appears to be a hidden character for the purposes of
letting editors
> >>>> know the encoding. The following link has some explanation
however, it
> >>>> states this is caused by excel. The file I created was
done so using
> >>>> notepad and not Excel.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>
>
https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-quick-tale-about-feff-the-invisible-character-cd25cd4630e7
> >>>> System Details:
> >>>> OS:
> >>>>> Windows 10.0.17134 Build 17134
> >>>>
> >>>> R Version:
> >>>>> platform       x86_64-w64-mingw32
> >>>>> arch           x86_64
> >>>>> os             mingw32
> >>>>> system         x86_64, mingw32
> >>>>> status
> >>>>> major          3
> >>>>> minor          4.1
> >>>>> year           2017
> >>>>> month          06
> >>>>> day            30
> >>>>> svn rev        72865
> >>>>> language       R
> >>>>> version.string R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
> >>>>> nickname       Single Candle
> >>>> ______________________________________________
> >>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> >>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >>> --
> >>> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
> >>> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
> >>> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> >>> Phone: (+45)38153501
> >>> Office: A 4.23
> >>> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >>
> >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
>
>
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

On 08/02/2019 11:12 a.m., Daniel Possenriede wrote:
> Tomas,
> 
>> In my scenario, the conversion is invoked by RGui before returning the
> input to the main R loop, even before the input gets to the parser. In
> principle, we could change this particular conversion in RGui to avoid the
> substitution.
> 
> Not sure whether I am missing something here, but I used RStudio for my
> examples (I should have said) and David's mentioned RStudio as well, so
it
> does not seem to be a problem with RGui only.
> 
> Another example for the "best fit" behaviour seems to be
"?"
> ("\u03A3", greek capital letter sigma, not "\u2211",
n-ary summation):
> 
> print("?")
> #> [1] "S"
> 
> Again with cp1252 on Windows 10, R 3.5.2, RStudio 1.2.1256 preview.
> 
>> even though we could rewrite in principle all calls to Windows API to
use
> Unicode and have all strings in UTF-8 in R, we would still have problems
> when interfacing with packages that assume strings are in current native
> encoding (without checking), so this problem won't be easy to fix.
> 
> Since I regularly encounter the reverse problem, i.e. packages that assume
> strings are in UTF-8 encoding without checking (which isn't very
> surprising, assuming that most package developers develop on Unix/macOS
> systems), I'd say, "rip of the bandaid rather sooner than
later". Obviously
> I don't know how many bugs would surface in packages if R for
Windows'
> native encoding were to switch to UTF-8, but these bugs would only be
> transitory, I suppose. Whereas there is a steady inflow of
> assume-UTF-8-encoding-bugs in new packages and functions with the current
> situation.
Just one minor comment:  it is *impossible* for R for Windows "native"
encoding to switch to UTF-8, since Windows doesn't support that.  The 
necessary change (which I'd support, but it's a really large amount of 
work) would be for R to drop its use of native encodings internally. 
Convert everything to UTF-8 on the way in, convert to native on the way out.

This is a large amount of work because R has preferred native encodings 
basically forever, so there are tons of locations needing changes, and a 
large effort would be required to make them.  It would likely be easier 
for Windows to add UTF-8 as a native encoding.  Converting between that 
and Windows internal UTF-16 is nearly trivial, much easier than many of 
the conversions it does.  And Microsoft has revenues of $90 billion per 
year, while R Core only has a few individuals donating their time:  so 
wouldn't it make more sense to ask them to act like responsible members 
of the computing community?

Duncan Murdoch
> 
> Best,
> Daniel
> 
> 
> Am Fr., 8. Feb. 2019 um 13:07 Uhr schrieb Tomas Kalibera <
> tomas.kalibera at gmail.com>:
> 
>> I can reproduce this behavior on my Windows 10 system in RGui (cp1252):
>> when I paste the Unicode infinity symbol into the console, it is
treated
>> as number 8. This is caused by Windows "best fit" default
behavior in
>> conversion of unicode characters to characters in the current native
>> encoding: at some point in the past, 8 has been chosen as a good fit
for
>> infinity in Windows. In my scenario, the conversion is invoked by RGui
>> before returning the input to the main R loop, even before the input
>> gets to the parser. In principle, we could change this particular
>> conversion in RGui to avoid the substitution. RGui uses
"\uxxxx" escapes
>> to pass characters that cannot be represented, this is why e.g. the
>> Cyrillic Zhe \u0436 worked, so we could tell Windows not to do the
>> substitution and pass "\u221e" for Infinity, and then the
string after
>> being processed by the parser will be represented in UTF-8 inside R and
>> could be e.g. printed by the RGui console. That is something that could
>> be considered, but it will not solve the main problem and it may
>> actually cause trouble to users who are used to such substitutions
>> (especially when the substitutions are more intuitive, but, that may be
>> a matter of opinion).
>>
>> The main problem is that in normal use, sooner or later R will get to
>> the point when it will need to do the conversion to native encoding,
and
>> in some context where "\uxxxx" escapes will not be possible.
One cannot
>> reliably work with strings in R that cannot be represented in the
>> current native encoding (except when one knows precisely how to avoid
>> the conversion in some specific task, but that may be brittle; so the
>> best-fit substitution might in principle help here). This problem does
>> not exist on Unix/macOS systems where the current native encoding is
>> UTF-8 these days, so today it only exists on Windows where UTF-8 cannot
>> be the current native encoding. As has been discussed before, even
>> though we could rewrite in principle all calls to Windows API to use
>> Unicode and have all strings in UTF-8 in R, we would still have
problems
>> when interfacing with packages that assume strings are in current
native
>> encoding (without checking), so this problem won't be easy to fix.
>>
>> Best,
>> Tomas
>>
>> On 2/7/19 3:10 PM, Daniel Possenriede wrote:
>>> There seems to be something odd with "?" on Windows (and
not only with
>>> read.table)
>>> In native encoding (cp-1252 in my case), "?" gets
converted to "8"
>>>
>>> x <-  "?"
>>> Encoding(x)
>>> #> [1] "unknown"
>>> print(x)
>>> #> [1] "8"
>>> charToRaw(x)
>>> #> [1] 38
>>>
>>> "?" is indeed "8"
>>>
>>> identical(x, "8")
>>> #> [1] TRUE
>>>
>>> Everything seems fine if  "?" is UTF-8 encoded.
>>>
>>> y <- "\u221E"
>>> Encoding(y)
>>> #> [1] "UTF-8"
>>> print(y)
>>> #> [1]  "?"
>>> charToRaw(y)
>>> #> [1] e2 88 9e
>>>
>>> Unless the string is converted back to native encoding.
>>>
>>> format(y)
>>> #> [1] "8"
>>>
>>> This ought to be "<U+221E>", equivalently to
>>>
>>> format("?")
>>> #> [1] "<U+221D>"
>>>
>>> Session Info:
>>>
>>> si <- sessionInfo()
>>> si$running
>>> #> [1] "Windows 10 x64 (build 17134)"
>>> si$R.version$version.string
>>> #> [1] "R version 3.5.2 (2018-12-20)"
>>> si$locale
>>> #> [1]
>>>
>>
"LC_COLLATE=German_Germany.1252;LC_CTYPE=German_Germany.1252;LC_MONETARY=German_Germany.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=German_Germany.1252"
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Am Do., 7. Feb. 2019 um 14:33 Uhr schrieb David Byrne <
>>> david.byrne222 at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>> I can confirm that it doesn't happen on Ubuntu 18.04.1 so
Peter is
>>>> most likely correct; it looks like its Windows specific.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 at 12:55, peter dalgaard <pdalgd at
gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> This doesn't seem to be happening on MacOS, neither in
Terminal nor
>>>> RStudio, (R 3.5.1, R-devel, R-patched). So probably Windows
specific.
>>>>> -pd
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 7 Feb 2019, at 11:17 , David Byrne
<david.byrne222 at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> Bug
>>>>>> Using read.table(file, encoding="UTF-8") to
import a UTF-8 encoded
>>>>>> file containing the infinity symbol (' ? ')
results in the infinity
>>>>>> symbol imported as the number 8. Other Unicode
characters seem
>>>>>> unaffected, example, Zhe: ?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Expected Behavior:
>>>>>> The imported data.frame should represent the infinity
symbol as the
>>>>>> expected 'Inf' so that normal mathematical
operations can be processed
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Stack Overflow Post:
>>>>>> I created a question on Stack Overflow where one other
member was able
>>>>>> to reproduce the same issues I was having. This
question can be found
>>>>>> at:
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54522196/r-read-table-with-utf-8-encoded-file-reads-infinity-symbol-as-8-int
>>>>>> Method to Reproduce - 1:
>>>>>> A simple method to reproduce this issues is to use
R-Studio: In the
>>>>>> console, type the following:
>>>>>>> read.table(text=" ?",
encoding="UTF-8")
>>>>>> The result should be a data.frame with a single value
of '8'
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Repeating the same with ? Results in correct expected
behavior
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Method to Reproduce - 2:
>>>>>> Create a .csv file containing the infinity and Zhe
characters (I have
>>>>>> attached the file for convenience, hopefully it is no
rejected by your
>>>>>> email service). Launch an interactive session using
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> r --vanilla
>>>>>> Enter the following statement taking care to replace
the
>>>>>> <path-to-file> with the appropriate one:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
read.table("<path-to-file>/unicode_chars.csv",
sep=",",
>>>> encoding="UTF-8")
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This should result in a two element data.frame; the
first being the
>>>>>> incorrect value of 8 with an additional <U+FEFF>
and the second the
>>>>>> correct value of Zhe.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Note the additional <U+FEFF> prefixed to the
front of the '8'. This
>>>>>> appears to be a hidden character for the purposes of
letting editors
>>>>>> know the encoding. The following link has some
explanation however, it
>>>>>> states this is caused by excel. The file I created was
done so using
>>>>>> notepad and not Excel.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>
https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-quick-tale-about-feff-the-invisible-character-cd25cd4630e7
>>>>>> System Details:
>>>>>> OS:
>>>>>>> Windows 10.0.17134 Build 17134
>>>>>>
>>>>>> R Version:
>>>>>>> platform       x86_64-w64-mingw32
>>>>>>> arch           x86_64
>>>>>>> os             mingw32
>>>>>>> system         x86_64, mingw32
>>>>>>> status
>>>>>>> major          3
>>>>>>> minor          4.1
>>>>>>> year           2017
>>>>>>> month          06
>>>>>>> day            30
>>>>>>> svn rev        72865
>>>>>>> language       R
>>>>>>> version.string R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
>>>>>>> nickname       Single Candle
>>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>>> --
>>>>> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
>>>>> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
>>>>> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
>>>>> Phone: (+45)38153501
>>>>> Office: A 4.23
>>>>> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>>
>>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>>
>>
> 
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