r - convert utf8 code point strings like <U+0161> to utf8

Question

I have a text file which contains some kind of fallback conversions of Unicode characters (the Unicode code points in angle brackets). So it contains e.g. foo<U+017E>bar which should be "foo?bar". Is there an easy way in R to convert the whole file to UTF8 with these characters converted? Unfortunately I am on Windows and can't find a supported UTF-8 locale.

Answer 1

Perhaps:

library(stringi)
library(magrittr)

"foo<U+0161>bar and cra<U+017E>y" %>% 
  stri_replace_all_regex("<U\+([[:alnum:]]+)>", "\\u$1") %>% 
  stri_unescape_unicode() %>% 
  stri_enc_toutf8()
## [1] "foo?bar and cra?y"

may work (I don't need the last conversion on macOS but you may on Windows).