Convert Characters to ASCII

Convert character vector to ASCII, replacing non-ASCII characters with single-byte (\x00) or two-byte (\u0000) codes.

ASCIIfy(x, bytes = 2, fallback = "?")

Arguments

x

a character vector, possibly containing non-ASCII characters.

bytes

either 1 or 2, for single-byte (\x00) or two-byte (\u0000) codes.

fallback

an output character to use, when input characters cannot be converted.

Value

A character vector like x, except non-ASCII characters have been replaced with \x00 or \u0000 codes.

Note

To render single backslashes, use these or similar techniques:

write(ASCIIfy(x), "file.txt")
cat(paste(ASCIIfy(x), collapse="\n"), "\n", sep="")

The resulting strings are plain ASCII and can be used in R functions and datasets to improve package portability.

See also

showNonASCII identifies non-ASCII characters in a character vector.

Author

Arni Magnusson.

Examples

cities <- c("S\u00e3o Paulo", "Reykjav\u00edk")
print(cities)
#> [1] "São Paulo" "Reykjavík"
ASCIIfy(cities, 1)
#> [1] "S\\xe3o Paulo" "Reykjav\\xedk"
ASCIIfy(cities, 2)
#> [1] "S\\u00e3o Paulo" "Reykjav\\u00edk"

athens <- "\u0391\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b1"
print(athens)
#> [1] "Αθήνα"
ASCIIfy(athens)
#> [1] "\\u0391\\u03b8\\u03ae\\u03bd\\u03b1"