src/library/base/man/sQuote.Rd

% File src/library/base/man/sQuote.Rd
% Part of the R package, https://www.R-project.org
% Copyright 1995-2018 R Core Team
% Distributed under GPL 2 or later

\name{sQuote}
\alias{sQuote}
\alias{dQuote}
\title{Quote Text}
\description{
  Single or double quote text by combining with appropriate single or
  double left and right quotation marks.
}
\usage{
sQuote(x, q = getOption("useFancyQuotes"))
dQuote(x, q = getOption("useFancyQuotes"))
}
\arguments{
  \item{x}{an \R object, to be coerced to a character vector.}
  \item{q}{the kind of quotes to be used, see \sQuote{Details}.}
}
\details{
  The purpose of the functions is to provide a simple means of markup
  for quoting text to be used in the R output, e.g., in warnings or
  error messages.

  The choice of the appropriate quotation marks depends on both the
  locale and the available character sets.  Older Unix/X11 fonts
  displayed the grave accent (ASCII code 0x60) and the apostrophe (0x27)
  in a way that they could also be used as matching open and close
  single quotation marks.  Using modern fonts, or non-Unix systems,
  these characters no longer produce matching glyphs.  Unicode provides
  left and right single quotation mark characters (U+2018 and U+2019);
  if Unicode markup cannot be assumed to be available, it seems good
  practice to use the apostrophe as a non-directional single quotation
  mark.

  Similarly, Unicode has left and right double quotation mark characters
  (U+201C and U+201D); if only ASCII's typewriter characteristics can be
  employed, than the ASCII quotation mark (0x22) should be used as both
  the left and right double quotation mark.

  Some other locales also have the directional quotation marks, notably
  on Windows.  TeX uses grave and apostrophe for the directional single
  quotation marks, and doubled grave and doubled apostrophe for the
  directional double quotation marks.

  What rendering is used depends on \code{q} which by default depends on
  the \code{\link{options}} setting for \code{useFancyQuotes}.  If this
  is \code{FALSE} then the undirectional
  ASCII quotation style is used.  If this is \code{TRUE} (the default),
  Unicode directional quotes are used are used where available
  (currently, UTF-8 locales on Unix-alikes and all Windows locales
  except \code{C}): if set to \code{"UTF-8"} UTF-8 markup is used
  (whatever the current locale). If set to \code{"TeX"}, TeX-style
  markup is used.  Finally, if this is set to a character vector of
  length four, the first two entries are used for beginning and ending
  single quotes and the second two for beginning and ending double
  quotes: this can be used to implement non-English quoting conventions
  such as the use of guillemets.

  Where fancy quotes are used, you should be aware that they may not be
  rendered correctly as not all fonts include the requisite glyphs: for
  example some have directional single quotes but not directional double
  quotes.
#ifdef windows
  This is particularly troublesome in Windows \sQuote{Command Prompt}
  windows, which by default are set up to run in the so-called OEM
  codepage, which in most locales uses a different encoding from
  Windows.  Further, if the codepage is changed (with \code{chcp.exe},
  e.g.\sspace{}to 1252 in a Western European language), the default raster fonts
  do not support the directional quotes.

  To work around this, the default for \code{options("useFancyQuotes")}
  is \code{FALSE} on Windows except for the \code{Rgui} console.  There
  fancy quotes work with the default Courier New font and more elegantly with
  Lucida Console and default East Asian fonts, but directional double
  quotes are missing in raster fonts such as Courier and FixedSys.
#endif
}
\value{
  A character vector of the same length as \code{x} (after any coercion)
  in the current locale's encoding.
}
\seealso{
  \link{Quotes} for quoting \R code.

  \code{\link{shQuote}} for quoting OS commands.
}
\references{
  Markus Kuhn, \dQuote{ASCII and Unicode quotation marks}.
  \url{https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html}
}
% these char strings have to be readable in any locale,
% so cannot use \uxxxx (fails in Japanese).
\examples{
op <- options("useFancyQuotes")
paste("argument", sQuote("x"), "must be non-zero")
options(useFancyQuotes = FALSE)
cat("\ndistinguish plain", sQuote("single"), "and",
    dQuote("double"), "quotes\n")
options(useFancyQuotes = TRUE)
cat("\ndistinguish fancy", sQuote("single"), "and",
    dQuote("double"), "quotes\n")
options(useFancyQuotes = "TeX")
cat("\ndistinguish TeX", sQuote("single"), "and",
    dQuote("double"), "quotes\n")
if(l10n_info()$`Latin-1`) {
    options(useFancyQuotes = c("\xab", "\xbb", "\xbf", "?"))
    cat("\n", sQuote("guillemet"), "and",
        dQuote("Spanish question"), "styles\n")
} else if(l10n_info()$`UTF-8`) {
    options(useFancyQuotes = c("\xc2\xab", "\xc2\xbb", "\xc2\xbf", "?"))
    cat("\n", sQuote("guillemet"), "and",
        dQuote("Spanish question"), "styles\n")
}
options(op)
}
\keyword{character}