diff --git a/src/unicode_fopen.h b/src/unicode_fopen.h
index 292de57b..eac96dc7 100644
--- a/src/unicode_fopen.h
+++ b/src/unicode_fopen.h
@@ -20,22 +20,23 @@
 #include "cpp11/r_string.hpp"
 #endif
 
-inline void print_hex(const char* string) {
-  unsigned char* p = (unsigned char*) string;
-  for (int i = 0; i < 300 ; i++) {
-    if (p[i] == '\0') break;
-    Rprintf("%c 0x%02x ", p[i], p[i]);
-    if ((i%16 == 0) && i)
-      Rprintf("\n");
-  }
-  Rprintf("\n");
-}
+// useful for print debugging file path encoding
+// inline void print_hex(const char* string) {
+//   unsigned char* p = (unsigned char*) string;
+//   for (int i = 0; i < 300 ; i++) {
+//     if (p[i] == '\0') break;
+//     Rprintf("%c 0x%02x ", p[i], p[i]);
+//     if ((i%16 == 0) && i)
+//       Rprintf("\n");
+//   }
+//   Rprintf("\n");
+// }
 
 // This is needed to support wide character paths on windows
 inline FILE* unicode_fopen(const char* path, const char* mode) {
   FILE* out;
 #ifdef _WIN32
-  // First conver the mode to the wide equivalent
+  // First convert the mode to the wide equivalent
   // Only usage is 2 characters so max 8 bytes + 2 byte null.
   wchar_t mode_w[10];
   MultiByteToWideChar(CP_UTF8, 0, mode, -1, mode_w, 9);
@@ -54,13 +55,10 @@ inline FILE* unicode_fopen(const char* path, const char* mode) {
   MultiByteToWideChar(CP_UTF8, 0, path, -1, buf, len);
   out = _wfopen(buf, mode_w);
 #else
-  // cpp11 will have converted the user's path to UTF-8 by now
-  // but we need to pass the path to fopen() in the native encoding
-  Rprintf("unicode_fopen() received path: %s\n", path);
-  print_hex(path);
+  // the path has UTF-8 encoding, because we do that unconditionally on the R
+  // side (but also because cpp11 is eager to use UTF-8)
+  // however, we need to pass the path to fopen() in the native encoding
   const char* native_path = Rf_translateChar(cpp11::r_string(path));
-  Rprintf("Calling fopen() on native path: %s\n", native_path);
-  print_hex(native_path);
   out = fopen(native_path, mode);
 #endif
 
@@ -85,13 +83,10 @@ make_mmap_source(const char* file, std::error_code& error) {
   free(buf);
   return out;
 #else
-  // cpp11 will have converted the user's path to UTF-8 by now
-  // but we need to pass the path to mio in the native encoding
-  Rprintf("make_mmap_source() received path: %s\n", file);
-  print_hex(file);
+  // the path has UTF-8 encoding, because we do that unconditionally on the R
+  // side (but also because cpp11 is eager to use UTF-8)
+  // however, we need to pass the path to fopen() in the native encoding
   const char* native_path = Rf_translateChar(cpp11::r_string(file));
-  Rprintf("Calling mio::make_mmap_source() on native path: %s\n", native_path);
-  print_hex(native_path);
   return mio::make_mmap_source(native_path, error);
 #endif
 }
diff --git a/src/vroom.cc b/src/vroom.cc
index 08f30780..6fe129c6 100644
--- a/src/vroom.cc
+++ b/src/vroom.cc
@@ -95,12 +95,9 @@
 [[cpp11::register]] bool has_trailing_newline(const cpp11::strings& filename) {
   std::FILE* f = unicode_fopen(CHAR(filename[0]), "rb");
 
-  Rprintf("In has_trailing_newline(): ");
   if (!f) {
-    Rprintf("no file\n");
     return true;
   }
-  Rprintf("yes file\n");
 
   std::setvbuf(f, nullptr, _IONBF, 0);