title: Global variable on load in R package
body: <p>I'm writing a package in R and I'd like to include some sample objects in it that would be easily accessible for users to play with. The problem is they contain non-ASCII characters, and <code>R CMD check</code> won't allow this in .rda files in <code>data</code>. It will, however, allow Unicode in <code>inst/extdata</code>. I could just have these datasets read and wrapped in objects when the package is loaded. I tried <code>assign</code> and <code>&lt;&lt;-</code>, but I couldn't make either work.</p>
  <p>Alternately, they could be loaded and saved as .rda files during the installation of the package. This would be preferable, in fact, but from what I read this seemed to be less possible.</p>
  <p>Probably irrelevant but possibly interesting bit of history: I started the package on Debian unstable. I saved those datasets as .rda and they passed the check just fine. At one point I made a little correction, resaved them, and got a warning. I saved them again, and the warning disappeared. Then I moved to Debian stable, added some new datasets, resaved them all, and now I can't get rid of the warning in any way. When I save them from r-devel, however, I only get a note, not a warning.</p>