Strange paste, string or package problem?

G'day Thomas,

On Tue, 4 Mar 2008 14:40:35 +1300

I came across this strange bug the other day, I'm not sure how to
solve it and I wonder if anyone can even replicate it.

Step 1) Make an R package using the package.skeleton() command with
only these two functions:

error <- function(){
  cmd <- paste(" -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " ?a ",1,sep="")
  cat(cmd,"\n")
}

Now why does that "<e2><80><93>" replace one of the "-" in the first
command?

With my mailtool, the "-" before the last a looks a bit longer than the
others; it definitely seems to be a different tool.  Also, if I cut and
paste this function into an emacs buffer on my Kubuntu machine, I see:

error <- function(){
  cmd <- paste(" -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " -a ",1," -a ",1," -a ",1,
               " \u2013a ",1,sep="")
  cat(cmd,"\n")
}

So somehow you must have entered not a "-" but some other symbol before
that last a.  And I guess what you see is a result of the locale and
the character encoding that you are working in.  But others would know
more about this than I and can probably explain better what is going on.

Cheers,

	Berwin

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