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formatters

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The formatters package provides two core pieces of functionality, both related to ASCII rendering:

  1. format_value provides the ability to format single- and multi-valued elements into ASCII display-ready strings
  2. the matrix_form framework provides generics for implementing ASCII rendering support for display tables

Both of these feature sets are used in the rtables package.

Motivation

The core motivation for formatters is the rendering of reporting tables into ASCII. In this context a “value” is the raw content that to appear in a single table cell. Most commonly this is a numeric vector of length 1, 2 or – occasionally – 3.

Installation

formatters is available on CRAN and you can install the latest released version with:

install.packages("formatters")

or you can install the latest development version directly from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("insightsengineering/formatters")

Packaged releases (both those on CRAN and those between official CRAN releases) can be found in the releases list.

To understand how to use this package, please refer to the Introduction to formatters article, which provides multiple examples of code implementation.

Format labels

formatters ships with a large number of pre-defined formats appropriate for rendering values into ASCII strings. These existing formats are specified by their labels. We can see the list of these by calling the list_valid_format_labels function:

list_valid_format_labels()

$`1d`
 [1] "xx"                 "xx."                "xx.x"
 [4] "xx.xx"              "xx.xxx"             "xx.xxxx"
 [7] "xx%"                "xx.%"               "xx.x%"
[10] "xx.xx%"             "xx.xxx%"            "(N=xx)"
[13] ">999.9"             ">999.99"            "x.xxxx | (<0.0001)"

$`2d`
 [1] "xx / xx"            "xx. / xx."          "xx.x / xx.x"
 [4] "xx.xx / xx.xx"      "xx.xxx / xx.xxx"    "xx (xx%)"
 [7] "xx (xx.%)"          "xx (xx.x%)"         "xx (xx.xx%)"
[10] "xx. (xx.%)"         "xx.x (xx.x%)"       "xx.xx (xx.xx%)"
[13] "(xx, xx)"           "(xx., xx.)"         "(xx.x, xx.x)"
[16] "(xx.xx, xx.xx)"     "(xx.xxx, xx.xxx)"   "(xx.xxxx, xx.xxxx)"
[19] "xx - xx"            "xx.x - xx.x"        "xx.xx - xx.xx"
[22] "xx (xx)"            "xx. (xx.)"          "xx.x (xx.x)"
[25] "xx.xx (xx.xx)"      "xx (xx.)"           "xx (xx.x)"
[28] "xx (xx.xx)"         "xx.x, xx.x"         "xx.x to xx.x"

$`3d`
[1] "xx.xx (xx.xx - xx.xx)"

attr(,"info")
[1] "xx does not modify the element, and xx. rounds a number to 0 digits"

Each of these labels describes how the incoming (possibly multi-element) raw value will be formatted. xx indicates that an element of the value will be printed as is, with no modification. xx. indicates that a numeric value element will be rounded to 0 decimal places, xx.x indicates rounding to 1 decimal place, etc.

Formatting values

Values are formatted via calls to format_value, like so:

format_value(5.1235, format = "xx.xx")

[1] "5.12"

format_value(c(1.2355, 2.6789), "(xx.xx, xx.xx)")

[1] "(1.24, 2.68)"

Table Rendering Framework

Advanced Usage Only These features are supported, and in fact are used in rtables and the experimental rlistings. That said, the API is currently very low-level and tailored to what rtables and rlistings need. How useful this is to other table frameworks may vary.

The second major piece of functionality in formatters is the ability to render tables into ASCII (and thus directly to the terminal) based on a so-called MatrixPrintForm representation of the table.

To hook up rtables-style ASCII display for your tables, it suffices to export a method for the exported matrix_form generic formatters provides. This method must return a MatrixPrintForm object representing your table.

We can build a baby example method for data.frames to illustrate this process:

## pagdfrow supports a large number of pieces of information regarding
## siblings and what information should be repeated after a pagination.
## we ignore all that here and just give the absolutely crucial info:
## nm (name), lab (label), rnum (absolute row position), pth ("path"),
## extent (how many lines it takes up), rclass ("class of row")
fake_pagdf_row <- function(i, rnms) {
    nm <- rnms[i]
    pagdfrow(nm = nm, lab = nm, rnum = i, pth = nm, extent = 1L,
             rclass = "NA")
}

matrix_form.data.frame <- function(df) {
    fmts <- lapply(df, function(x) if(is.null(obj_format(x))) "xx" else obj_format(x))

    bodystrs <- mapply(function(x, fmt) {
        sapply(x, format_value, format = fmt)
    }, x = df, fmt = fmts)

    rnms <- row.names(df)
    if(is.null(rnms))
        rnms <- as.character(seq_len(NROW(df)))

    cnms <- names(df)

    strings <- rbind(c("", cnms),
                     cbind(rnms, bodystrs))

    fnr <- nrow(strings)
    fnc <- ncol(strings)

    ## center alignment for column labels, left alignment for everything else
    aligns <- rbind("center",
                    matrix("left", nrow = NROW(df), ncol = fnc))
    ## build up fake pagination df,
    rowdf <- basic_pagdf(row.names(df))
    MatrixPrintForm(strings = strings,
                      aligns = aligns,
                      spans = matrix(1, nrow = fnr, ncol = fnc),
                      formats = NULL,
                      row_info = rowdf,
                      has_topleft = FALSE,
                      nlines_header = 1,
                      nrow_header = 1)
}
cat(toString(matrix_form.data.frame(mtcars)))

                      mpg    cyl   disp    hp    drat    wt     qsec    vs   am   gear   carb
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Mazda RX4             21     6     160     110   3.9    2.62    16.46   0    1    4      4
Mazda RX4 Wag         21     6     160     110   3.9    2.875   17.02   0    1    4      4
Datsun 710            22.8   4     108     93    3.85   2.32    18.61   1    1    4      1
Hornet 4 Drive        21.4   6     258     110   3.08   3.215   19.44   1    0    3      1
Hornet Sportabout     18.7   8     360     175   3.15   3.44    17.02   0    0    3      2
Valiant               18.1   6     225     105   2.76   3.46    20.22   1    0    3      1
Duster 360            14.3   8     360     245   3.21   3.57    15.84   0    0    3      4
Merc 240D             24.4   4     146.7   62    3.69   3.19    20      1    0    4      2
Merc 230              22.8   4     140.8   95    3.92   3.15    22.9    1    0    4      2
Merc 280              19.2   6     167.6   123   3.92   3.44    18.3    1    0    4      4
Merc 280C             17.8   6     167.6   123   3.92   3.44    18.9    1    0    4      4
Merc 450SE            16.4   8     275.8   180   3.07   4.07    17.4    0    0    3      3
Merc 450SL            17.3   8     275.8   180   3.07   3.73    17.6    0    0    3      3
Merc 450SLC           15.2   8     275.8   180   3.07   3.78    18      0    0    3      3
Cadillac Fleetwood    10.4   8     472     205   2.93   5.25    17.98   0    0    3      4
Lincoln Continental   10.4   8     460     215   3      5.424   17.82   0    0    3      4
Chrysler Imperial     14.7   8     440     230   3.23   5.345   17.42   0    0    3      4
Fiat 128              32.4   4     78.7    66    4.08   2.2     19.47   1    1    4      1
Honda Civic           30.4   4     75.7    52    4.93   1.615   18.52   1    1    4      2
Toyota Corolla        33.9   4     71.1    65    4.22   1.835   19.9    1    1    4      1
Toyota Corona         21.5   4     120.1   97    3.7    2.465   20.01   1    0    3      1
Dodge Challenger      15.5   8     318     150   2.76   3.52    16.87   0    0    3      2
AMC Javelin           15.2   8     304     150   3.15   3.435   17.3    0    0    3      2
Camaro Z28            13.3   8     350     245   3.73   3.84    15.41   0    0    3      4
Pontiac Firebird      19.2   8     400     175   3.08   3.845   17.05   0    0    3      2
Fiat X1-9             27.3   4     79      66    4.08   1.935   18.9    1    1    4      1
Porsche 914-2         26     4     120.3   91    4.43   2.14    16.7    0    1    5      2
Lotus Europa          30.4   4     95.1    113   3.77   1.513   16.9    1    1    5      2
Ford Pantera L        15.8   8     351     264   4.22   3.17    14.5    0    1    5      4
Ferrari Dino          19.7   6     145     175   3.62   2.77    15.5    0    1    5      6
Maserati Bora         15     8     301     335   3.54   3.57    14.6    0    1    5      8
Volvo 142E            21.4   4     121     109   4.11   2.78    18.6    1    1    4      2

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.
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