Even if files are not saved in UTF-8, you can extract information on character encoding from the file names and import the texts correctly.
require(quanteda)
require(readtext)
temp_dir contains the example files in various character encodings.
path_temp <- tempdir()
unzip(system.file("extdata", "data_files_encodedtexts.zip", package = "readtext"), exdir = path_temp)
list.files() returns names of all the text files (".txt”) in the directory
filename <- list.files(path_temp, "^(Indian|UDHR_).*\\.txt$")
head(filename)
## [1] "IndianTreaty_English_UTF-16LE.txt" "IndianTreaty_English_UTF-8-BOM.txt"
## [3] "UDHR_Arabic_ISO-8859-6.txt" "UDHR_Arabic_UTF-8.txt"
## [5] "UDHR_Arabic_WINDOWS-1256.txt" "UDHR_Chinese_GB2312.txt"
You can extract character encoding information from the file names using R’s basic commands.
filename <- gsub(".txt$", "", filename)
encoding <- sapply(strsplit(filename, "_"), "[", 3)
head(encoding)
## [1] "UTF-16LE" "UTF-8-BOM" "ISO-8859-6" "UTF-8" "WINDOWS-1256"
## [6] "GB2312"
There is a character encoding not supported by R.
setdiff(encoding, iconvlist())
## [1] "UTF-8-BOM"
You then pass encoding to readtext() to convert various character encodings into UTF-8.
path_data <- system.file("extdata/", package = "readtext")
dat_txt <- readtext(paste0(path_data, "/data_files_encodedtexts.zip"),
encoding = encoding,
docvarsfrom = "filenames",
docvarnames = c("document", "language", "input_encoding"))
print(dat_txt, n = 50)
## readtext object consisting of 36 documents and 3 docvars.
## # Description: df [36 × 5]
## doc_id text document langua… input_en…
## <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
## 1 IndianTreaty_English_UTF-16LE.txt "\"WHEREAS, t… IndianTr… English UTF-16LE
## 2 IndianTreaty_English_UTF-8-BOM.txt "\"ARTICLE 1.… IndianTr… English UTF-8-BOM
## 3 UDHR_Arabic_ISO-8859-6.txt "\"الديباجة\n… UDHR Arabic ISO-8859…
## 4 UDHR_Arabic_UTF-8.txt "\"الديباجة\n… UDHR Arabic UTF-8
## 5 UDHR_Arabic_WINDOWS-1256.txt "\"الديباجة\n… UDHR Arabic WINDOWS-…
## 6 UDHR_Chinese_GB2312.txt "\"世界人权宣… UDHR Chinese GB2312
## 7 UDHR_Chinese_GBK.txt "\"世界人权宣… UDHR Chinese GBK
## 8 UDHR_Chinese_UTF-8.txt "\"世界人权宣… UDHR Chinese UTF-8
## 9 UDHR_English_UTF-16BE.txt "\"Universal … UDHR English UTF-16BE
## 10 UDHR_English_UTF-16LE.txt "\"Universal … UDHR English UTF-16LE
## 11 UDHR_English_UTF-8.txt "\"Universal … UDHR English UTF-8
## 12 UDHR_English_WINDOWS-1252.txt "\"Universal … UDHR English WINDOWS-…
## 13 UDHR_French_ISO-8859-1.txt "\"Déclaratio… UDHR French ISO-8859…
## 14 UDHR_French_UTF-8.txt "\"Déclaratio… UDHR French UTF-8
## 15 UDHR_French_WINDOWS-1252.txt "\"Déclaratio… UDHR French WINDOWS-…
## 16 UDHR_German_ISO-8859-1.txt "\"Die Allgem… UDHR German ISO-8859…
## 17 UDHR_German_UTF-8.txt "\"Die Allgem… UDHR German UTF-8
## 18 UDHR_German_WINDOWS-1252.txt "\"Die Allgem… UDHR German WINDOWS-…
## 19 UDHR_Greek_CP1253.txt "\"ΟΙΚΟΥΜΕΝΙΚ… UDHR Greek CP1253
## 20 UDHR_Greek_ISO-8859-7.txt "\"ΟΙΚΟΥΜΕΝΙΚ… UDHR Greek ISO-8859…
## 21 UDHR_Greek_UTF-8.txt "\"ΟΙΚΟΥΜΕΝΙΚ… UDHR Greek UTF-8
## 22 UDHR_Hindi_UTF-8.txt "\"मानव अधिका… UDHR Hindi UTF-8
## 23 UDHR_Icelandic_ISO-8859-1.txt "\"Mannréttin… UDHR Icelan… ISO-8859…
## 24 UDHR_Icelandic_UTF-8.txt "\"Mannréttin… UDHR Icelan… UTF-8
## 25 UDHR_Icelandic_WINDOWS-1252.txt "\"Mannréttin… UDHR Icelan… WINDOWS-…
## 26 UDHR_Japanese_CP932.txt "\"『世界人権… UDHR Japane… CP932
## 27 UDHR_Japanese_ISO-2022-JP.txt "\"『世界人権… UDHR Japane… ISO-2022…
## 28 UDHR_Japanese_UTF-8.txt "\"『世界人権… UDHR Japane… UTF-8
## 29 UDHR_Japanese_WINDOWS-936.txt "\"『世界人権… UDHR Japane… WINDOWS-…
## 30 UDHR_Korean_ISO-2022-KR.txt "\"세 계 인 … UDHR Korean ISO-2022…
## 31 UDHR_Korean_UTF-8.txt "\"세 계 인 … UDHR Korean UTF-8
## 32 UDHR_Russian_ISO-8859-5.txt "\"Всеобщая д… UDHR Russian ISO-8859…
## 33 UDHR_Russian_KOI8-R.txt "\"Всеобщая д… UDHR Russian KOI8-R
## 34 UDHR_Russian_UTF-8.txt "\"Всеобщая д… UDHR Russian UTF-8
## 35 UDHR_Russian_WINDOWS-1251.txt "\"Всеобщая д… UDHR Russian WINDOWS-…
## 36 UDHR_Thai_UTF-8.txt "\"ปฏิญญาสากล\… UDHR Thai UTF-8