Wouldn't the obvious thing be to not use an r string here? Using r strings does not imply the use of non-ascii characters (AFAIK they are intended for regex patterns), and using regular strings does not imply you cannot use Unicode (with \uxxxx).
At some point I would think that accepting Unicode in package source code would become acceptable... but supporting Unicode in data objects does not implicitly suggest that allowing Unicode in source code has to be supported so your arguments don't IMO really bring any weight to the discussion. On November 29, 2025 2:55:52 AM PST, Mark Bravington <[email protected]> wrote: >Hi--- My package 'lyxport' has R code with several raw strings (see ?Quotes) >which contain UTF-8 characters (FWIW: in order to deal with wacky legacy Latex >characters). For example, one of the strings is: > > converto <- r"--{ > Ä \"A ä \"a Á \'A á \'a Ȧ \.A ȧ \.a Ā \=A > ā \=a  \^A â \^a À \`A à \`a Ą \k{A} ą \k{a} ><snipped> > Ŋ {\NG} Ø {\O} ø {\o} œ {\oe} Œ {\OE} ß {\ss} þ {\th} > Þ {\TH} > }--" > >RCMD CHECK is not happy, and gives a Warning: > >"Portable packages must use only ASCII characters in their R code and >NAMESPACE directives, except perhaps in comments. Use \uxxxx escapes for other >characters." > >and indeed that is as stated in "Writing R extensions", section 1.1.5 >("Package subdirectories") and section 1.6.3, "Encoding issues". > >But I wonder if this is still sensible now that > >(i) R has raw strings (since ~R 4.0); >(ii) the DESCRIPTION file explicitly says "Encoding: UTF-8"; and >(iii) R >= 4.2 pretty much now enforces UTF-8 in Windows (and UTF-8 could even >be a "requirement" of this package, if that helped). > >With "normal" strings then maybe the \uxxxx thing is reasonable; but shouldn't >the contents of raw strings be exempt? You can't put \uxxxx into a raw string, >for obvious reasons... > >cheers >Mark > > >PS Of course, there are ways around the Warning (eg storing the strings as >files elsewhere in the package, and reading those files during the code) but >they are tedious, harder to maintain, and reduce clarity (imagine using \uxxxx >in the above!). Since I don't particularly care whether the package goes on >CRAN or not (it's living quite happily in R-universe), I've no plans to change >my code, but I would prefer to avoid Warnings that then have to be explained >to would-be users. And I am probably not the only person affected. > >PPS The package has been working fine on Windows, Macs, and Linux. > >______________________________________________ >[email protected] mailing list >https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel -- Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
