Create summary table of categorical variables of different lengths

Question

In SPSS it is fairly easy to create a summary table of categorical variables using "Custom Tables":

How can I do this in R?

General and expandable solutions are preferred, and solutions using the Plyr and/or Reshape2 packages, because I am trying to learn those.

Example Data: (mtcars is in the R installation)

df <- colwise(function(x) as.factor(x) ) (mtcars[,8:11])

P.S.

Please note, my goal is to get everything in one table like in the picture. I have been strugling for many hours but my attempts have been so poor that posting the code probably won't add to the comprehensibility of the question.

Answer 1

One way to get the output, but not the formatting:

library(plyr)
ldply(mtcars[,8:11],function(x) t(rbind(names(table(x)),table(x),paste0(prop.table(table(x))*100,"%"))))
    .id 1  2       3
1    vs 0 18  56.25%
2    vs 1 14  43.75%
3    am 0 19 59.375%
4    am 1 13 40.625%
5  gear 3 15 46.875%
6  gear 4 12   37.5%
7  gear 5  5 15.625%
8  carb 1  7 21.875%
9  carb 2 10  31.25%
10 carb 3  3  9.375%
11 carb 4 10  31.25%
12 carb 6  1  3.125%
13 carb 8  1  3.125%

Answer 2

A base R solution using lapply() and do.call() with rbind() to stitch together the pieces:

x <- lapply(mtcars[, c("vs", "am", "gear", "carb")], table)

neat.table <- function(x, name){
  xx <- data.frame(x)
  names(xx) <- c("Value", "Count")
  xx$Fraction <- with(xx, Count/sum(Count))
  data.frame(Variable = name, xx)
}

do.call(rbind, lapply(seq_along(x), function(i)neat.table(x[i], names(x[i]))))

Results in:

   Variable Value Count Fraction
1        vs     0    18  0.56250
2        vs     1    14  0.43750
3        am     0    19  0.59375
4        am     1    13  0.40625
5      gear     3    15  0.46875
6      gear     4    12  0.37500
7      gear     5     5  0.15625
8      carb     1     7  0.21875
9      carb     2    10  0.31250
10     carb     3     3  0.09375
11     carb     4    10  0.31250
12     carb     6     1  0.03125
13     carb     8     1  0.03125

The rest is formatting.