Set locale to system default UTF-8
Solution 1
Answering my own question: On Ubuntu the default LANG
is defined in /etc/default/locale
:
jeroen@dev:~⟫ cat /etc/default/locale
# Created by cloud-init v. 0.7.7 on Wed, 29 Jun 2016 11:02:51 +0000
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
So in R we could do something like:
readRenviron("/etc/default/locale")
LANG <- Sys.getenv("LANG")
if(nchar(LANG))
Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", LANG)
Apache also has a line in /etc/apache2/envvars
that can be uncommented to enable this.
Solution 2
Try this:
Sys.setlocale(category = "LC_ALL", locale = "English_United States.1252")
Solution 3
I guess you need to make a check for the OS. The locale names differ by OS, see the examples at the help file.
?Sys.getlocale()
Examples
Sys.getlocale()
Sys.getlocale("LC_TIME")
## Not run:
Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", "de") # Solaris: details are OS-dependent
Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", "de_DE.utf8") # Modern Linux etc.
Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", "de_DE.UTF-8") # ditto
Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", "de_DE") # OS X, in UTF-8
Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", "German") # Windows
## End(Not run)
Sys.getlocale("LC_PAPER") # may or may not be set
## Not run:
Sys.setlocale("LC_COLLATE", "C") # turn off locale-specific sorting,
# usually, but not on all platforms
## End(Not run)
Jeroen Ooms
#rstats developer and staff RSE for @ropensci at UC Berkeley.
Updated on June 25, 2020Comments
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Jeroen Ooms almost 4 years
When running R inside rApache, the locale is inherited from the Apache webserver, and therefore
Sys.getlocale()
is always equal to"C"
. I would like my web application to useUTF8
, so I use:Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", 'en_US.UTF-8')
However this doesn't work on machines that do not have this locale available:
1: Setting LC_CTYPE failed, using "C" 2: Setting LC_COLLATE failed, using "C" 3: Setting LC_TIME failed, using "C" 4: Setting LC_MESSAGES failed, using "C" 5: Setting LC_MONETARY failed, using “C”
Is there any way to use
Sys.setlocale
to set the locale to the system defaultUTF-8
? I.e. something that would also work on Windows or a German Linux? -
Sathish about 10 yearsYes, that is correct. I tested it only on Windows 7, 64 bit. I am not sure about linux versions, but I remember once I had this issue on ubuntu, and I followed the instructions on this link to change my locale settings. askubuntu.com/questions/162391/how-do-i-fix-my-locale-issue. Please do not quote me for linux versions, because I am not sure.
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Sathish about 10 yearsI just tested this on my ubuntu machine. I followed the link in my previous comment. Then, I opened a fresh "R" session. The locale settings were automatically changed to en_US.UTF8. If you want to revert back to "C" locale type or "POSIX" type, use the function: Sys.setlocale(category = "LC_ALL", locale = "C"). HTH
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HansHarhoff over 7 yearsThis does not actually set the locale to UTF-8. This setting is latin1.
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eblondel over 7 yearsOn my case, i solved my encoding issues by using the same line but setting
"en_US.UTF-8"
as locale. Many thanks for this -
Admin over 5 yearsThank you, that indeed solved the issue with RApache when sending text to the webservice in UTF-8