In R 3.5.0 using the `encoding' argument of source() prevents loading
files from the internet; without the `encoding' argument files can be
loaded from the internet, but if they contain non-ascii characters,
these are not correctly displayed under MS-Windows (but they are
correctly displayed under GNU/Linux). With R 3.4.{2,3,4} there is no
such problem: using `encoding' the files are loaded and non-ascii
characters are correctly displayed under MS-Windows (but not without
`encoding'). Here is a transcript from R 3.5.0 under GNU/Linux (the
URLs are real, in case anyone wants to try and reproduce the problem):
> ls()
character(0)
> source("http://home.versanet.de/~s-berman/source1.R";, encoding="UTF-8")
> ls()
character(0)
> source("http://home.versanet.de/~s-berman/source2.R";, encoding="UTF-8")
> ls()
character(0)
> source("http://home.versanet.de/~s-berman/source1.R";)
> ls()
[1] "source.test1"
> source("http://home.versanet.de/~s-berman/source2.R";)
> ls()
[1] "source.test1" "source.test2"
> source.test1()
[1] "This is a test."
> source.test2()
[1] "Non-ascii: äöüß"
(The four non-ascii characters are Unicode 0xE4, 0xF6, 0xFC, 0xDF.)
With 3.5.0 under MS-Windows, the transcript is the same except for the
display of the last output, which is this:
[1] "Non-ascii: äöüß"
(Here there are eight non-ascii characters, which display the Unicode
decompositions of the four non-ascii characters above.)
Here is a transcript from R 3.4.3 under MS-Windows (under GNU/Linux it's
the same except that the non-ascii characters are also correctly
displayed even without the `encoding' argument):
> ls()
character(0)
> source("http://home.versanet.de/~s-berman/source1.R";)
> ls()
[1] "source.test1"
> source("http://home.versanet.de/~s-berman/source2.R";)
> ls()
[1] "source.test1" "source.test2"
> source.test1()
[1] "This is a test."
> source.test2()
[1] "Non-ascii: äöüß"
> rm(source.test2)
> ls()
[1] "source.test1"
> source("http://home.versanet.de/~s-berman/source2.R";, encoding="UTF-8")
> ls()
[1] "source.test1" "source.test2"
> source.test2()
[1] "Non-ascii: äöüß"
I did a web search but didn't find any reports of this issue, nor did I
see any relevant entry in the 3.5.0 NEWS, so this looks like a bug, but
maybe I've overlooked something. I'd be grateful for any enlightenment.
Steve Berman
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