Use Rf_charIsASCII for IS_ASCII instead of testing LEVELS on R >= 4.5 (#6422)

* Drop direct use of LEVELS in R >= 4.5

There's no explicit encoding code for ASCII, so use charIsASCII()
("eapi", expected to appear in R-4.5.0).

* fine-tune NEWS

* multiple PRs :)

* tag SVN revision

* TODO

* fix merge

---------

Co-authored-by: Michael Chirico <[email protected]>

Author: aitap

NEWS.md

@@ -8,6 +8,10 @@
 
 2. `fread(keepLeadingZeros=TRUE)` now correctly parses dates with leading zeros as dates instead of strings, [#6851](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/6851). Thanks @TurnaevEvgeny for the report and @ben-schwen for the fix.
 
+## NOTES
+
+1. Continued work to remove non-API C functions, [#6180](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/6180). Thanks Ivan Krylov for the PRs and for writing a clear and concise guide about the R API: https://aitap.codeberg.page/R-api/.
+
 # data.table [v1.17.0](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/milestone/34)  (20 Feb 2025)
 
 ## POTENTIALLY BREAKING CHANGES

src/data.table.h

@@ -42,7 +42,12 @@
 /* we mean the encoding bits, not CE_NATIVE in a UTF-8 locale */
 #define IS_UTF8(x)  (getCharCE(x) == CE_UTF8)
 #define IS_LATIN(x) (getCharCE(x) == CE_LATIN1)
-#define IS_ASCII(x) (LEVELS(x) & 64) // API expected in R >= 4.5
+// TODO: remove the `R_SVN_VERSION` check when R 4.5.0 is released (circa Apr. 2025)
+#if R_VERSION < R_Version(4, 5, 0) || R_SVN_REVISION < 86789
+# define IS_ASCII(x) (LEVELS(x) & 64)
+#else
+# define IS_ASCII(x) (Rf_charIsASCII(x)) // no CE_ASCII
+#endif
 #define IS_TRUE(x)  (TYPEOF(x)==LGLSXP && LENGTH(x)==1 && LOGICAL(x)[0]==TRUE)
 #define IS_FALSE(x) (TYPEOF(x)==LGLSXP && LENGTH(x)==1 && LOGICAL(x)[0]==FALSE)
 #define IS_TRUE_OR_FALSE(x) (TYPEOF(x)==LGLSXP && LENGTH(x)==1 && LOGICAL(x)[0]!=NA_LOGICAL)