Replace accented characters in R with non-accented counterpart (UTF-8 encoding) [duplicate]

Answer 1

Another option is to use gsubfn package:

library(gsubfn)
string="Hølmer"
gsubfn(paste(names(unwanted_array),collapse='|'), unwanted_array,string)
[1] "Holmer"

Answer 2

The below answers are basically taken from elsewhere. The key is getting your unwanted_array in the right format. You might want it as a list:

unwanted_array = list(    'Š'='S', 'š'='s', 'Ž'='Z', 'ž'='z', 'À'='A', 'Á'='A', 'Â'='A', 'Ã'='A', 'Ä'='A', 'Å'='A', 'Æ'='A', 'Ç'='C', 'È'='E', 'É'='E',
                            'Ê'='E', 'Ë'='E', 'Ì'='I', 'Í'='I', 'Î'='I', 'Ï'='I', 'Ñ'='N', 'Ò'='O', 'Ó'='O', 'Ô'='O', 'Õ'='O', 'Ö'='O', 'Ø'='O', 'Ù'='U',
                            'Ú'='U', 'Û'='U', 'Ü'='U', 'Ý'='Y', 'Þ'='B', 'ß'='Ss', 'à'='a', 'á'='a', 'â'='a', 'ã'='a', 'ä'='a', 'å'='a', 'æ'='a', 'ç'='c',
                            'è'='e', 'é'='e', 'ê'='e', 'ë'='e', 'ì'='i', 'í'='i', 'î'='i', 'ï'='i', 'ð'='o', 'ñ'='n', 'ò'='o', 'ó'='o', 'ô'='o', 'õ'='o',
                            'ö'='o', 'ø'='o', 'ù'='u', 'ú'='u', 'û'='u', 'ý'='y', 'ý'='y', 'þ'='b', 'ÿ'='y' )

You can do this easily with iconv or chartr:

> iconv(string, to='ASCII//TRANSLIT')
[1] "Holmer"

> chartr(paste(names(unwanted_array), collapse=''),
         paste(unwanted_array, collapse=''),
         string)
[1] "Holmer"

Otherwise you have to loop through all of replacements because mapply or similar wouldn't account for symbols already replaced by previous gsub operations.:

# the loop:
out <- string
for(i in seq_along(unwanted_array))
    out <- gsub(names(unwanted_array)[i],unwanted_array[i],out)

The result:

> out
[1] "Holmer"