[R-lang] writing Unicode files from R

[Scott Jackson]

hi R-langers,

Has anyone worked with getting Unicode *out* of R?  I've had some
success getting Unicode that began life in an Excel doc, text file,
etc. into R and getting R to display the Unicode characters (e.g.,
Arabic, Cyrillic) in the GUI and in plots.  However, whenever I've
wanted to manipulate some data that has some Unicode text and get it
out of R into a file that could be then opened in Excel and read by
humans, I've gotten stuck.  Using write.table() or write() or cat() or
even writeClipboard() have all resulted in ASCII renderings of the
Unicode (e.g., <U+0001>), which I can't manage to get back into their
human-readable Unicode characters in Excel, Notepad, or other text
editors.

Note I'm not just interested in printing out a *rendering* of the
Unicode output (like you might be able to get via a
Sweave/LaTeX-generated PDF), but actually spit out a file from R that
can be opened and worked with in Excel (or any other Unicode-reading
program), in such a way that the Unicode is displayed correctly.

My latest frustration is that I can get the Unicode to display in the
Rgui, and if I literally highlight, copy & paste from the Rgui into
Excel, it looks fine.  But that's not a workable solution for what I
really want to do.  So it feels like I'm just one simple, obvious step
away...

anyone have any ideas/suggestions?

thanks,
-scott