Non-English (Hebrew) output in the RStudio console

Question

The following test works fine on my laptop, but causes an error on my HP EliteOne 800 with Windows 10

H <- "שלום" H 

In a car with a problem, I get

[1] "ùìåí"

I checked several encodings like

 Encoding(H) <- "ISO-8859-1" 

which gives the same result, and

 Encoding(H)<-"UTF-8" H 

which produces

[1] "\ xf9 \ xec \ xe5 \ xed"

Below is the answer to

 sessionInfo() 

R version 3.2.2 (2015-08-14) Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32 / x64 (64-bit) Works under: Windows 8 x64 (build 9200)

locale: [1] LC_COLLATE = Hebrew_Israel.1255 LC_CTYPE = Hebrew_Israel.1255 LC_MONETARY = Hebrew_Israel.1255 [4] LC_NUMERIC = C
LC_TIME = Hebrew_Israel.1255

included base packages: [1] grDevices utils graphics statistics
database methods database

loaded through the namespace (and not attached): [1] tools_3.2.2

Any help would be appreciated

Avi

Answer 1

Thank you, Richard, you led me to a solution that works, although I don’t understand why. I played with various codes and accidentally changed my language to Japanese, and worked . Than I tested various other locales and they do the same trick. If anyone knows why Hebrew does not work with the Hebrew language, I would like to know. Below is the code and its product:

 H <- "שלום" H Sys.getlocale() Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "Hebrew") H <- "שלום" H Sys.getlocale() Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "ja") H <- "שלום" H Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "Portuguese_Brazil.1252") H <- "שלום" H Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "German") H <- "שלום" H produces the following output, where only the Hebrew locale does not show Hebrew. 

H <- "שלום"

N

[1] "ùìåí" # PROBLEM IN HEBREW

Sys.getlocale ()

[1] "LC_COLLATE = Hebrew_Israel.1255; LC_CTYPE = Hebrew_Israel.1255; LC_MONETARY = Hebrew_Israel.1255; LC_NUMERIC = C; LC_TIME = Hebrew_Israel.1255"

Sys.setlocale ("LC_ALL", "Hebrew")

[1] "LC_COLLATE = Hebrew_Israel.1255; LC_CTYPE = Hebrew_Israel.1255; LC_MONETARY = Hebrew_Israel.1255; LC_NUMERIC = C; LC_TIME = Hebrew_Israel.1255"

H <- "שלום" H

[1] "ùìåí" # PROBLEM IN HEBREW

Sys.getlocale ()

[1] LC_COLLATE = Hebrew_Israel.1255; LC_CTYPE = Hebrew_Israel.1255; LC_MONETARY = Hebrew_Israel.1255; LC_NUMERIC = C; LC_TIME = Hebrew_Israel.1255 "

Sys.setlocale ("LC_ALL", "ja")

[1] "LC_COLLATE = Japanese_Japan.932; LC_CTYPE = Japanese_Japan.932; LC_MONETARY = Japanese_Japan.932; LC_NUMERIC = C; LC_TIME = Japanese_Japan.932"

H <- "שלום" # DECISION IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE, WHICH WORKS, ALSO SEE BELOW

N

[1] "שלום"

Sys.setlocale ("LC_ALL", "Portuguese_Brazil.1252") [1] "LC_COLLATE = Portuguese_Brazil.1252; LC_CTYPE = Portuguese_Brazil.1252; LC_MONETARY = Portuguese_Brazil.1252; LC_NUMERIC = C; LC_TIME = Portuguese_Brazil.1252

H <- "שלום"

N

[1] "שלום"

Sys.setlocale ("LC_ALL", "German") [1] "LC_COLLATE = German_Germany.1252; LC_CTYPE = German_Germany.1252; LC_MONETARY = German_Germany.1252; LC_NUMERIC = C; LC_TIME = German_Germany.1252"

H <- "שלום"

N

[1] "שלום"