A question about the API mkchar()

Hi, Simon


Thanks for your elaborated instruction on mkCharCE.

Concerning the UTF-8 Encoding, mkCharCE(X, CE_UTF8) is the correct way in parsing the Unicode string.

However, I met another question:

My program logic is intended to read the content of a text file r.tmp, which is encoded with UTF-8. After reading it, every line will be send to another C function ext_show(t const char** text, int* length, int* errLevel) for the further handle. Attached is the text file ?r.tmp?.

I tried to use the following R code to accomplish the process:

checkoutput<-scan(?r.tmp?,

                      what='character',

                      blank.lines.skip=FALSE,

                      sep='\n',

                      skip=0,

                      quiet=TRUE,

                      encoding = ?unknown?)

lines<-length(checkoutput)

print(checkoutput)

for (i in 1:lines)

{

Inputstring = checkoutput[i]

out <- .C('ext_show',as.character(inputstring),

                                        as.integer(nchar(inputstring)),

                                        as.integer(err),

                                        PACKAGE="mypkg")

}





I don?t know why, if I typed the command in R GUI environment, the Japanese character can be shown correctly. Also, if I sink the inputstring into another text file, the content of this file also written correctly.

But if I use the above code passing the inputstring into function ext_show, the string passed inputstring has been changed in the function ext_show ().

My current environment is WindowsXP, R 2.7.0, R encoding is "UTF-8":

getOption("encoding")

[1] "UTF-8"

Sys.getlocale()

[1] "LC_COLLATE=Chinese_People's Republic of China.936;LC_CTYPE=Chinese_People's Republic of China.936;LC_MONETARY=Chinese_People's Republic of China.936;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=Chinese_People's Republic of China.936"


For current encoding is UTF-8, I don't think Chinese local will hinder the correct result.

The ext_show is defined as below:

   void ext_show(

       const char** text,

       int* length,

       int* errLevel)

       {

           *errLevel = LoadLib();

           int real_length = strlen(*text);

           if( LOAD_SUCCESS == *errLevel )

               *errLevel = ShowInScreen(*text, real_length);

       }

I am new to the R programming, and not every familiar with the encoding handle in R, I suspect if it is necessary to convert encoding of the inputstring before passing to the function ext_show().

Many Thanks!

Joey


?2008-10-28?"Simon Urbanek" <simon.urbanek at r-project.org> ???

On Oct 28, 2008, at 6:26 , F?n L?ng wrote:

Hi guys,

Hey guy :)

I've got a question about the API mkchar(). I have met some
difficulty in parsing utf-8 string to mkchar() in R-2.7.0.

There is no mkchar() in R. Did you perhaps mean mkChar()?

I was intending to parse an utf-8 string str_jan (some Japanese
characters such as?, whose utf-8 code is E381B5

There is no such "UTF-8" code. I'm not sure if you meant Unicode, but
that would be \u3075 (Hiragana hu) for that character. The UTF-8
encoding of that character is a three-byte sequence 0xe3 0x81 0xb5 if
that's what you meant.

) to R API SEXP
mkChar(const char *name) , we only need to create the SEXP using the
string that we parsed.



Unfortunately, I found when parsing the variable str_jan, R will
automatically convert the str_jan according to the current locale
setting,

That is not true - it will be kept as-is regardless of the encoding.
Note that mkChar(x) is equivalent to mkCharCE(x, CE_NATIVE); No
conversion takes place when the string is created, but you have told R
that it is in the native encoding. If that is not true (which is your
case probably isn't), all bets are off since you're lying to R ;).

so only in the English locale could the function work correctly,
under other locale, such as Japanese or Chinese, the string will be
convert incorrectly.

That is clearly a nonsense since the encoding has nothing to do with
the locale language itself (Japanese, Chinese, ..). We are talking
about the encoding (note that both English and Japanese locales can
use UTF-8 encoding, but don't have to). I think you'll need to get the
concepts right here - for each string you must define the encoding in
order to be able to reproduce the unicode sequence that the string
represents. At this point it has nothing to do with the language.

As a matter of fact, those utf-8 code already is Unicode string, and
don't need to be converted at all.

I also tried to use the SEXP Rf_mkCharCE(const char *, cetype_t);,
Parsing the CE_UTF8 as the argument of cetype_t, but the result is
worse. It returned the result as ucs code, an kind of Unicode under
windows platform.

Well, that's exactly what you want, isn't it? The string is correctly
flagged as UTF-8 so R is finally able to find out what exactly is
represented by that string. However, your locale apparently doesn't
support such characters so it cannot be displayed. If you use a locale
that supports it, it works just fine, for example if you use local
with SJIS encoding R will still know how to convert it from UTF-8 to
SJIS *for display*. The actual string is not touched.

Here is a small piece of code that shows you the difference between
native encoding and UTF8-strings:

#include
#include

SEXP me() {
  const char c[] = { 0xe3, 0x81, 0xb5, 0 };
  SEXP a = allocVector(STRSXP, 2);
  PROTECT(a);
  SET_STRING_ELT(a, 0, mkCharCE(c, CE_NATIVE));
  SET_STRING_ELT(a, 1, mkCharCE(c, CE_UTF8));
  UNPROTECT(1);
  return a;
}

In a UTF-8 locale it doesn't matter:

ginaz:sandbox$ LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8 R

.Call("me")

[1] "?" "?"

But in any other, let's say SJIS, it does:

ginaz:sandbox$ LANG=ja_JP.SJIS R

.Call("me")

[1] "??" "?"

Note that the first string is wrong, because we have supplied UTF-8
encoding but the current one is SJIS. The second one is correct since
we told R that it's UTF-8 encoded.

Finally, if the character cannot be displayed in the given encoding:

ginaz:sandbox$ LANG=en_US.US-ASCII R

.Call("me")

[1] "\343\201\265" "