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
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 |