R: invalid multibyte string [duplicate]

Solution 1:

I realize this is pretty late, but I had a similar problem and I figured I'd post what worked for me. I used the iconv utility (e.g., "iconv file.pcl -f UTF-8 -t ISO-8859-1 -c"). The "-c" option skips characters that can't be translated.

Solution 2:

If you want an R solution, here's a small convenience function I sometimes use to find where the offending (multiByte) character is lurking. Note that it is the next character to what gets printed. This works because print will work fine, but substr throws an error when multibyte characters are present.

find_offending_character <- function(x, maxStringLength=256){  
  print(x)
  for (c in 1:maxStringLength){
    offendingChar <- substr(x,c,c)
    #print(offendingChar) #uncomment if you want the indiv characters printed
    #the next character is the offending multibyte Character
  }    
}

string_vector <- c("test", "Se\x96ora", "works fine")

lapply(string_vector, find_offending_character)

I fix that character and run this again. Hope that helps someone who encounters the invalid multibyte string error.

Solution 3:

I had a similarly strange problem with a file from the program e-prime (edat -> SPSS conversion), but then I discovered that there are many additional encodings you can use. this did the trick for me:

tbl <- read.delim("dir/file.txt", fileEncoding="UCS-2LE")