I tried this on R 2.11.0 unstable (2010-03-07 r51225) using encoding="UTF-8" and check.names=FALSE in read.table(). It seemed to basically work, except that the data.frame/matrix printing routine wants to print the Unicode codes for the characters in the names:
> data1 <- read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt", header = TRUE, sep = "\t", encoding="UTF-8", check.names=FALSE) > data1 # I see Unicode codes, presumably the correct ones <U+05D0><U+05D7><U+05EA> <U+05E9><U+05EA><U+05D9><U+05D9><U+05DD> 1 12 97 2 123 354 3 6 1 <U+05E9><U+05DC><U+05D5><U+05E9> 1 6 2 44 3 3 > colnames(data1) # I see Hebrew strings (in R the first starts with aleph) [1] "אחת" "שתיים" "שלוש" > colnames(data)[1] [1] "אחת" > strsplit(colnames(data)[1], "")[[1]][1] [1] "א" > data1[,"שתיים"] [1] 97 354 1 I'm writing this in Outlook in the English (American) locale and the copy-n-paste from the R gui window to the Outlook window of the Hebrew letters reversed the whole line of them (reversing the characters in each name and the names in the line), which I why I showed a subset of the names and a substring of the first name. However, when I try to use lm() with this data.frame then I run into trouble, which is probably the same problem as I see in the data.frame printing: > lm(`שתיים` ~ `שלוש`) Error: \uxxxx sequences not supported inside backticks (line 1) Bill Dunlap Spotfire, TIBCO Software wdunlap tibco.com > -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org > [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of Tal Galili > Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 2:41 PM > To: r-help@r-project.org > Subject: [R] How to read.table with “Hebrew” column names (in R)? > > (I am reposting this question after a few months without a > solution...) > > > Hi all, > > I am trying to read a .txt file, with Hebrew column names, but without > success. > > I uploaded an example file to: http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt > > And tried the command: > > read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt", header = > T, sep = "\t") > > This returns me with: > > X.....ª X...ª...... X...Å“.... > 1 12 97 6 > 2 123 354 44 > 3 6 1 3 > > Instead of: > > ×חת ×©×ª×™×™× ×©×œ×•×© > 12 97 6 > 123 354 44 > 6 1 3 > > > Trying to use something like: > > read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt",fileEncodin > g ="iso8859-8") > > Has resulted in: > > V1 > 1 ? > Warning messages: > 1: In read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt", fileEncoding > = "iso8859-8") : > > invalid input found on input connection > 'http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt' > 2: In read.table("http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt", fileEncoding > = "iso8859-8") : > > incomplete final line found by readTableHeader on > 'http://www.talgalili.com/files/aa.txt' > > While also trying this: > > Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "en_US.UTF-8") > > Or this: > > Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", > "en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8") > > Get's me this: > > [1] "" > Warning message: > In Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "en_US.UTF-8") : > > OS reports request to set locale to "en_US.UTF-8" cannot be honored > > > > My output for: > > l10n_info() > > Is: > > $MBCS > [1] FALSE > > $`UTF-8` > [1] FALSE > > $`Latin-1` > [1] TRUE > > $codepage > [1] 1252 > > And for: > > Sys.getlocale() > > Is: > > [1] "LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United > States.1252;LC_MONETARY=English_United > States.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United States.1252" > > Finally, here is the > sessionInfo() > > R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14) > > i386-pc-mingw32 > > locale: > [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1255 LC_CTYPE=English_United > States.1252 LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C > [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252 > > attached base packages: > [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base > > loaded via a namespace (and not attached): > [1] tools_2.10.1 > > > Any suggestion or clarification will be appreciated. > > > > Best, > > Tal > > ----------------Contact > Details:------------------------------------------------------- > Contact me: tal.gal...@gmail.com | 972-52-7275845 > Read me: www.talgalili.com (Hebrew) | www.biostatistics.co.il > (Hebrew) | > www.r-statistics.com (English) > -------------------------------------------------------------- > -------------------------------- > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.