[R] iconv() replaces invalid characters with " " instead of " " (two spaces instead of one) on unix?

[Anthony Damico]

hello, i am trying to replace non-ASCII characters in a character string
with a single space.  the iconv() function works as i expect it to on
windows, but on unix, non-ASCII characters are getting replaced with two
spaces instead of one.  i suppose i could write a workaround for my code,
but i'm wondering if i'm making some other mistake?

in the output below, this is the result i'm getting:
[1] "cancelaci  n"

and this is the result i want:
[1] "cancelaci n"

thanks!!

=================

> getOption( "encoding" )
[1] "windows-1252"

> a <- "cancelación"
> iconv(a,"","ASCII")
[1] NA
> iconv(a,"","ASCII",sub=" ")
[1] "cancelaci  n"

=================

> sessionInfo()
R version 3.1.2 (2014-10-31)
Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
 [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
 [1] R.utils_1.34.0    R.oo_1.18.0       R.methodsS3_1.6.1 descr_1.0.4
 [5] SAScii_1.0        downloader_0.3    foreign_0.8-61    MonetDB.R_0.9.5
 [9] digest_0.6.6      DBI_0.3.1

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] xtable_1.7-4

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]