Print pretty data.frames/tables to console

Question

Is there a way to print small data.frames to the console in a more readable manner?

For example, would it be possible to output to the console:

library(MASS)    iris[1:5, ]    Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2  setosa 2          4.9         3.0          1.4         0.2  setosa 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2  setosa 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2  setosa 5          5.0         3.6          1.4         0.2  setosa 

as

iris[1:5, ]    +--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+---------+   | Sepal.Length | Sepal.Width | Petal.Length | Petal.Width | Species |   +--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+---------+ 1 |          5.1 |         3.5 |          1.4 |         0.2 |  setosa | 2 |          4.9 |         3.0 |          1.4 |         0.2 |  setosa | 3 |          4.7 |         3.2 |          1.3 |         0.2 |  setosa | 4 |          4.6 |         3.1 |          1.5 |         0.2 |  setosa | 5 |          5.0 |         3.6 |          1.4 |         0.2 |  setosa |   +--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+---------+ 

I realise for large data.frames it would take up an unnecessary amount of time, but if it's an option, I would like to be able to look at small frames in a more structured manner.

In particular, when I have two text fields next to each other, it would be much easier with a pipe between the two fields to separate them, as the spacing between words is the same size as the spacing between columns.

Thanks

Answer 1

In case it helps anyone, I just stumbled across the fact that knitr's kable achieves a nice pretty print. Combine with some of the .Rprofile suggestions above, this seems to achieve what I had in mind.

> knitr::kable(head(iris))  | Sepal.Length| Sepal.Width| Petal.Length| Petal.Width|Species | |------------:|-----------:|------------:|-----------:|:-------| |          5.1|         3.5|          1.4|         0.2|setosa  | |          4.9|         3.0|          1.4|         0.2|setosa  | |          4.7|         3.2|          1.3|         0.2|setosa  | |          4.6|         3.1|          1.5|         0.2|setosa  | |          5.0|         3.6|          1.4|         0.2|setosa  | |          5.4|         3.9|          1.7|         0.4|setosa  | 

Answer 2

I had the same problem recently and came across the huxtable package. It is very flexible and maybe a litte overkill for just nicer console output, but it served me very well.

Here is how you could solve your problem using huxtable:

library(huxtable) library(magrittr)  small_iris <- iris[1:5, ]  iris_hux <-    hux(small_iris) %>%    add_colnames() %>%    set_bold(row = 1, col = everywhere, value = TRUE) %>%    set_all_borders(TRUE) 

I think all functions speak for themselves. For a thorough introduction, see https://hughjonesd.github.io/huxtable/huxtable.html#adding-row-and-column-names.

print_screen(iris_hux) yield this output (in the console!):

I have not figured out yet how to suppress the bottom information on the column names. So if someone knows, please comment!

EDIT: In order to suppress the column names at the bottom, use colnames = FALSE inside print_screen().