formatC {base}R Documentation

Formatting Using C-style Formats

Description

Formatting numbers individually and flexibly, using C style format specifications.

Usage

formatC(x, digits = NULL, width = NULL,
        format = NULL, flag = "", mode = NULL,
        big.mark = "", big.interval = 3L,
      small.mark = "", small.interval = 5L,
    decimal.mark = ".", preserve.width = "individual",
        zero.print = NULL, drop0trailing = FALSE)

prettyNum(x, big.mark = "",   big.interval = 3L,
          small.mark = "", small.interval = 5L,
          decimal.mark = ".",
          preserve.width = c("common", "individual", "none"),
          zero.print = NULL, drop0trailing = FALSE, is.cmplx = NA, ...)

Arguments

x an atomic numerical or character object, possibly complex only for prettyNum(), typically a vector of real numbers.
digits the desired number of digits after the decimal point (format = "f") or significant digits (format = "g", = "e" or = "fg").

Default: 2 for integer, 4 for real numbers. If less than 0, the C default of 6 digits is used. If specified as more than 50, 50 will be used with a warning unless format = "f" where it is limited to typically 324. (Not more than 15–21 digits need be accurate, depending on the OS and compiler used. This limit is just a precaution against segfaults in the underlying C runtime.)

width the total field width; if both digits and width are unspecified, width defaults to 1, otherwise to digits + 1. width = 0 will use width = digits, width < 0 means left justify the number in this field (equivalent to flag ="-"). If necessary, the result will have more characters than width. For character data this is interpreted in characters (not bytes nor display width).
format equal to "d" (for integers), "f", "e", "E", "g", "G", "fg" (for reals), or "s" (for strings). Default is "d" for integers, "g" for reals.

"f" gives numbers in the usual xxx.xxx format; "e" and "E" give n.ddde+nn or n.dddE+nn (scientific format); "g" and "G" put x[i] into scientific format only if it saves space to do so.

"fg" uses fixed format as "f", but digits as the minimum number of significant digits. This can lead to quite long result strings, see examples below. Note that unlike signif this prints large numbers with more significant digits than digits. Trailing zeros are dropped in this format, unless flag contains "#".

flag For formatC, a character string giving a format modifier as in Kernighan and Ritchie (1988, page 243). "0" pads leading zeros; "-" does left adjustment, others are "+", " ", and "#". There can be more than one of these, in any order.
mode "double" (or "real"), "integer" or "character". Default: Determined from the storage mode of x.
big.mark character; if not empty used as mark between every big.interval decimals before (hence big) the decimal point.
big.interval see big.mark above; defaults to 3.
small.mark character; if not empty used as mark between every small.interval decimals after (hence small) the decimal point.
small.interval see small.mark above; defaults to 5.
decimal.mark the character to be used to indicate the numeric decimal point.
preserve.width string specifying if the string widths should be preserved where possible in those cases where marks (big.mark or small.mark) are added. "common", the default, corresponds to format-like behavior whereas "individual" is the default in formatC().
zero.print logical, character string or NULL specifying if and how zeros should be formatted specially. Useful for pretty printing ‘sparse’ objects.
drop0trailing logical, indicating if trailing zeros, i.e., "0" after the decimal mark, should be removed; also drops "e+00" in exponential formats.
is.cmplx optional logical, to be used when x is "character" to indicate if it stems from complex vector or not. By default (NA), x is checked to ‘look like’ complex.
... arguments passed to format.

Details

If you set format it overrides the setting of mode, so formatC(123.45, mode="double", format="d") gives 123.

The rendering of scientific format is platform-dependent: some systems use n.ddde+nnn or n.dddenn rather than n.ddde+nn.

formatC does not necessarily align the numbers on the decimal point, so formatC(c(6.11, 13.1), digits=2, format="fg") gives c("6.1", " 13"). If you want common formatting for several numbers, use format.

prettyNum is the utility function for prettifying x. x can be complex (or format(<complex>), here. If x is not a character, format(x[i], ...) is applied to each element, and then it is left unchanged if all the other arguments are at their defaults. Note that prettyNum(x) may behave unexpectedly if x is a character vector not resulting from something like format(<number>): in particular it assumes that a period is a decimal mark.

Value

A character object of same size and attributes as x, in the current locale's encoding. Unlike format, each number is formatted individually. Looping over each element of x, the C function sprintf(...) is called for numeric inputs (inside the C function str_signif).

formatC: for character x, do simple (left or right) padding with white space.

Author(s)

formatC was originally written by Bill Dunlap, later much improved by Martin Maechler. It was first adapted for R by Friedrich Leisch.

References

Kernighan, B. W. and Ritchie, D. M. (1988) The C Programming Language. Second edition. Prentice Hall.

See Also

format.

sprintf for more general C like formatting.

Examples

xx  <- pi * 10^(-5:4)
cbind(format(xx, digits=4), formatC(xx))
cbind(formatC(xx, width = 9, flag = "-"))
cbind(formatC(xx, digits = 5, width = 8, format = "f", flag = "0"))
cbind(format(xx, digits=4), formatC(xx, digits = 4, format = "fg"))

formatC(    c("a", "Abc", "no way"), width = -7)  # <=> flag = "-"
formatC(c((-1:1)/0,c(1,100)*pi), width=8, digits=1)

xx <- c(1e-12,-3.98765e-10,1.45645e-69,1e-70,pi*1e37,3.44e4)
##       1        2             3        4      5       6
formatC(xx)
formatC(xx, format="fg")       # special "fixed" format.
formatC(xx[1:4], format="f", digits=75) #>> even longer strings

formatC(c(3.24, 2.3e-6), format="f", digits=11, drop0trailing=TRUE)

r <- c("76491283764.97430", "29.12345678901", "-7.1234", "-100.1","1123")
## American:
prettyNum(r, big.mark = ",")
## Some Europeans:
prettyNum(r, big.mark = "'", decimal.mark = ",")

(dd <- sapply(1:10, function(i)paste((9:0)[1:i],collapse="")))
prettyNum(dd, big.mark="'")

## examples of 'small.mark'
pN <- stats::pnorm(1:7, lower.tail = FALSE)
cbind(format (pN, small.mark = " ", digits = 15))
cbind(formatC(pN, small.mark = " ", digits = 17, format = "f"))

cbind(ff <- format(1.2345 + 10^(0:5), width = 11, big.mark = "'"))
## all with same width (one more than the specified minimum)

## individual formatting to common width:
fc <- formatC(1.234 + 10^(0:8), format="fg", width=11, big.mark = "'")
cbind(fc)

## complex numbers:
r <- 10.0000001; rv <- (r/10)^(1:10)
(zv <- (rv + 1i*rv))
op <- options(digits=7) ## (system default)
(pnv <- prettyNum(zv))
stopifnot(pnv == "1+1i", pnv == format(zv),
          pnv == prettyNum(zv, drop0trailing=TRUE))
## more digits change the picture:
options(digits=8)
head(fv <- format(zv), 3)
prettyNum(fv)
prettyNum(fv, drop0trailing=TRUE) # a bit nicer
options(op)
[Package base version 2.11.0 Index]