R SIG Fedora - Aug 2017 - Error "translateCharUTF8' must be called on a CHARSXP Execution halted"

Dear list,

I installed R 3.3.2 on a Red Hat Linux Enterprise 7.3 machine by adding the
EPEL-repository and then installing it via yum.
R starts up and seems to be doing fine at first sight. However, when I try to
list the files in a directory with the command

files <- list.files(path="/home/username/directory_name/",
pattern="*.Rda",, full.names=T, recursive=FALSE)

I get the error

translateCharUTF8' must be called on a CHARSXP
Execution halted

On my local windows machine the command works fine.
Googling this nothing really comes up except that the installation might be
broken. (See
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/list-files-error-message-translateCharUTF8-must-be-called-on-a-CHARSXP-td3250302.html)

The strange thing is, that if I copy and paste the command into R and execute
it, it does not work, but if I copy and paste it into R and change that command
in a way that should not change its result but only add spaces or something like
that it might run. E.g. changing it to

files <- list.files(path = "/home/username/directory_name/",
pattern = "*.Rda",, full.names = T, recursive = FALSE)

might work, might not work and return the same error, or might execute but when
I then type "files" that might return

[1]Error: 'getCharCE' must be called on a CHARSXP

The sessionInfo commmand gives me:
sessionInfo()
R version 3.3.2 (2016-10-31)
Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.3 (Maipo)

locale:
[1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
[3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
[5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
[7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
[9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

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

uname -mrs gives me:
Linux 3.10.0-514.el7.x86_64 x86_64

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Stefan Braun

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

On 23.08.2017 12:02, Braun, Stefan wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I installed R 3.3.2 on a Red Hat Linux Enterprise 7.3 machine by adding the
EPEL-repository and then installing it via yum.
> R starts up and seems to be doing fine at first sight. However, when I try
to list the files in a directory with the command
>
> files <- list.files(path="/home/username/directory_name/",
pattern="*.Rda",, full.names=T, recursive=FALSE)
>
> I get the error
>
> translateCharUTF8' must be called on a CHARSXP
> Execution halted
>
> On my local windows machine the command works fine.
> Googling this nothing really comes up except that the installation might be
broken. (See
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/list-files-error-message-translateCharUTF8-must-be-called-on-a-CHARSXP-td3250302.html)
>
> The strange thing is, that if I copy and paste the command into R and
execute it, it does not work, but if I copy and paste it into R and change that
command in a way that should not change its result but only add spaces or
something like that it might run. E.g. changing it to
>
> files <- list.files(path = "/home/username/directory_name/",
pattern = "*.Rda",, full.names = T, recursive = FALSE)
>
> might work, might not work and return the same error, or might execute but
when I then type "files" that might return
>
> [1]Error: 'getCharCE' must be called on a CHARSXP
>
> The sessionInfo commmand gives me:
> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.3.2 (2016-10-31)
> Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> Running under: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.3 (Maipo)
>
> locale:
> [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
> [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
> [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
> [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
> [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> uname -mrs gives me:
> Linux 3.10.0-514.el7.x86_64 x86_64
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Best regards,
> Stefan Braun
Just for the record, there's the stackoverflow question
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45835818/translatecharutf8-must-be-called-on-a-charsxp-execution-halted
Cheers
Johannes
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-Fedora mailing list
> R-SIG-Fedora at r-project.org
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-fedora

It is difficult to debug this without a reproducible example. 

Do you have, in the file system that you are trying to list, files with
names that are not utf8-encoded?

Martyn

On Wed, 2017-08-23 at 13:12 +0200, Johannes Lips wrote:
> On 23.08.2017 12:02, Braun, Stefan wrote:
> > Dear list,
> > 
> > I installed R 3.3.2 on a Red Hat Linux Enterprise 7.3 machine by
> > adding the EPEL-repository and then installing it via yum.
> > R starts up and seems to be doing fine at first sight. However,
> > when I try to list the files in a directory with the command
> > 
> > files <-
list.files(path="/home/username/directory_name/",
> > pattern="*.Rda",, full.names=T, recursive=FALSE)
> > 
> > I get the error
> > 
> > translateCharUTF8' must be called on a CHARSXP
> > Execution halted
> > 
> > On my local windows machine the command works fine.
> > Googling this nothing really comes up except that the installation
> > might be broken. (See http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/list-files-erro
> > r-message-translateCharUTF8-must-be-called-on-a-CHARSXP-
> > td3250302.html)
> > 
> > The strange thing is, that if I copy and paste the command into R
> > and execute it, it does not work, but if I copy and paste it into R
> > and change that command in a way that should not change its result
> > but only add spaces or something like that it might run. E.g.
> > changing it to
> > 
> > files <- list.files(path =
"/home/username/directory_name/",
> > pattern = "*.Rda",, full.names = T, recursive = FALSE)
> > 
> > might work, might not work and return the same error, or might
> > execute but when I then type "files" that might return
> > 
> > [1]Error: 'getCharCE' must be called on a CHARSXP
> > 
> > The sessionInfo commmand gives me:
> > sessionInfo()
> > R version 3.3.2 (2016-10-31)
> > Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> > Running under: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.3 (Maipo)
> > 
> > locale:
> > [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
> > [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
> > [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
> > [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
> > [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> > [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
> > 
> > attached base packages:
> > [1] stats     graphics  grDevices
> > utils     datasets  methods   base
> > 
> > uname -mrs gives me:
> > Linux 3.10.0-514.el7.x86_64 x86_64
> > 
> > Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > Stefan Braun
> 
> Just for the record, there's the stackoverflow question
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45835818/translatecharutf8-must-b
> e-called-on-a-charsxp-execution-halted
> Cheers
> Johannes
> > 
> > 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > R-SIG-Fedora mailing list
> > R-SIG-Fedora at r-project.org
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-fedora
> 
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-Fedora mailing list
> R-SIG-Fedora at r-project.org
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-fedora