RStudio fails to read GBP pound sign - r

Question

After a bit of a gap I updated RStudio and all packages this morning.
I have a little function that I use to prettify currencies
currency <- function(n, k=FALSE) {
n <- ifelse(!k, str_c("£", comma(round(n,0))), str_c("£", comma(round(n/1000,0)),"k"))
return(n)
}
It now fails to parse - the problem is the £ sign.
Error in parse(text = lines, n = -1, srcfile = srcfile) :
[path]/plot_helpers.R:72:
25: unexpected INCOMPLETE_STRING
71: currency <- function(n, k=FALSE) {
72: n <- ifelse(!k, str_c("
^
In addition: Warning message:
In readLines(con, warn = FALSE, n = n, ok = ok, skipNul = skipNul) :
invalid input found on input connection '/home/richardc/ownCloud/prodr/R/plot_helpers.R'
However I can run the code within the editor and it works fine. What is causing readLines to fail in this way ?

Answer 1

After some messing about today, I realise that the problem is in devtools. To recap here is a test project testencr.prj:
library(stringr)
library(devtools)
main <- function(n) {
n <- str_c("£", n)
return(n)
}
I can run the code fine from the console, but when I use devtools it barfs on the UTF-8 character:
> devtools::load_all()
Loading testencr
Error in parse(text = lines, n = -1, srcfile = srcfile) :
/home/richardc/ownCloud/test/R/test_enc.R:6:14: unexpected INCOMPLETE_STRING
5: main <- function(n) {
6: n <- str_c("
^
In addition: There were 27 warnings (use warnings() to see them)
But when I add a specific encoding into the DESCRIPTION
Encoding: UTF-8
It is all fine (this notwithstanding the project defaults are UTF8)
Loading testencr
There were 36 warnings (use warnings() to see them)```

Answer 2

I was having the same problem, specifically in a Shiny app (not the rest of the time). I managed to solve it by using this unicode instead of £:
enc2utf8("\u00A3")