replace_non_ascii {supportR}

Replace Non-ASCII Characters with Comparable ASCII Characters

Description

Finds all non-ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters in a character vector and replaces them with ASCII characters that are as visually similar as possible. For example, various special dash types (e.g., em dash, en dash, etc.) are replaced with a hyphen. The function will return a warning if it finds any non-ASCII characters for which it does not have a hard-coded replacement. Please open a GitHub Issue if you encounter this warning and have a suggestion for what the replacement character should be for that particular character.

Usage

replace_non_ascii(x = NULL, include_letters = FALSE)

Arguments

x

(character) vector in which to replace non-ASCII characters

include_letters

(logical) whether to include letters with accents (e.g., u with an umlaut, etc.). Defaults to FALSE

Value

(character) vector where all non-ASCII characters have been replaced by ASCII equivalents

Examples

# Make a vector of the hexadecimal codes for several non-ASCII characters
## This function accepts the characters themselves but CRAN checks do not
non_ascii <- c("\u201C", "\u00AC", "\u00D7")

# Invoke function
(ascii <- replace_non_ascii(x = non_ascii))