Use gsub to replace curly apostrophe with straight apostrophe in R list of character vectors

Question

Looking for some guidance on how to replace a curly apostrophe with a straight apostrophe in an R list of character vectors.

The reason I'm replacing the curly apostrophes - later in the script, I check each list item, to see if it's found in a dictionary (using qdapDictionary) to ensure it's a real word and not garbage. The dictionary uses straight apostrophes, so words with the curly apostrophes are being "rejected."

A sample of the code I have currently follows. In my test list, item #6 contains a curly apostrophe, and item #2 has a straight apostrophe.

Example:

list_TestWords <- as.list(c("this", "isn't", "ideal", "but", "we", "can’t", "fix", "it"))

func_ReplaceTypographicApostrophes <- function(x) {
   gsub("’", "'", x, ignore.case = TRUE)
 }

list_TestWords_Fixed <- lapply(list_TestWords, func_ReplaceTypographicApostrophes)

The result: No change. Item 6 still using curly apostrophe. See output below.

list_TestWords_Fixed
[[1]]
[1] "this"

[[2]]
[1] "isn't"

[[3]]
[1] "ideal"

[[4]]
[1] "but"

[[5]]
[1] "we"

[[6]]
[1] "can’t"

[[7]]
[1] "fix"

[[8]]
[1] "it"

Any help you can offer will be most appreciated!

Answer 1

This might work: gsub("[\u2018\u2019\u201A\u201B\u2032\u2035]", "'", x)

I found it over here: http://axonflux.com/handy-regexes-for-smart-quotes