R help - Mar 2012 - Reading text files from other languages

I'm trying to read a data file that contains characters from the Spanish 
language:
> Station <-
read.fwf("LosDatos.txt",widths=c(7,7,25,8,8,5),header=FALSE,
+                     skip=3,n=separ[1]-4)

Then the R interpreter issues the following message:

  Error en substring(x, first, last) : 
    invalid multibyte string at '<d1>A, S.'
  Calls: read.fwf -> cat -> sapply -> lapply -> FUN -> substring

I know that the message is because there is a "?" before the text
"A, S.".

Is there a way to tell R that the text file is UTF-8 encoded?

Thanks,

--Sergio.

Hi Julio,

If you look at the documentation for

?read.fwf

you will see '...' further arguments to be passed to
'read.table'

and if you look at

?read.table

you will see there is an argument called, 'encoding', so, yes.  Just
specify the encoding.

Cheers,

Josh


On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 3:41 PM, Julio Sergio <juliosergio at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I'm trying to read a data file that contains characters from the
Spanish
> language:
>
>> Station <-
read.fwf("LosDatos.txt",widths=c(7,7,25,8,8,5),header=FALSE,
> + ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? skip=3,n=separ[1]-4)
>
> Then the R interpreter issues the following message:
>
> ?Error en substring(x, first, last) :
> ? ?invalid multibyte string at '<d1>A, S.'
> ?Calls: read.fwf -> cat -> sapply -> lapply -> FUN ->
substring
>
> I know that the message is because there is a "?" before the text
"A, S.".
>
> Is there a way to tell R that the text file is UTF-8 encoded?
>
> Thanks,
>
> --Sergio.
>
> ______________________________________________
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.


-- 
Joshua Wiley
Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology
Programmer Analyst II, Statistical Consulting Group
University of California, Los Angeles
https://joshuawiley.com/

Joshua Wiley <jwiley.psych <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 
> 
> 
Thanks Joshua!

Best regards,

--Sergio.