Print a data frame with columns aligned (as displayed in R)

r dataframe text-alignment output-formatting

14,618

Solution 1

You could redirect the output of print to file.

max.print <- getOption('max.print')
options(max.print=nrow(dframe) * ncol(dframe))
sink('dframe.txt')
dframe
sink()
options(max.print=max.print)

Solution 2

You could also use capture.output with cat

cat(capture.output(dframe), file = 'dframe.txt', sep = '\n')

Solution 3

To control the output, tune print.data.frame to your needs and capture the output to a file, eg.:

capture.output(
  print.data.frame(df, row.names=F, print.gap=3, quote=F, right=F),
  sep="\n", file="out.txt"
)

Solution 4

# Add the row names to the data frame, if you want them included
dframe2 <- data.frame("Row"=rownames(dframe), dframe, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

# apply format over each column
dframe2 <- apply(dframe2, 2, format)

# print it out, make sure not to use quotes
write.table(dframe2, "test.txt", quote=FALSE, row.names=FALSE)

Solution 5

I liked the simplicity the answer of Matthew Plourde, but unfortunately, it does not offer a way to get rid of the row names/numbers for my situation; so, I modified a little bit the answer of Ricardo:

print.to.file <- function(df, filename) {
  cnames <- colnames(df)
  n      <- as.matrix(nchar(cnames))

  d <- apply(df, 2, format)
  n <- apply(cbind(n, nchar(d[1,])), 1, max)

  fmts <- paste0("%",n, "s")
  for(i in 1:length(cnames)) {
    cnames[i] <- sprintf(fmts[i], cnames[i])
    d[,i] <- sprintf(fmts[i], trimws(d[,i]))
  }
  d <- rbind(cnames, d)
  write.table(d, filename, quote=F, row.names=F, col.names=F)
}

This gives the same output of Matthew's except row names/numbers.

EDIT: replace trim with trimws.

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14,618

terdon

Elected moderator on Unix & Linux. I've been using Linux since the late '90s and have gone through a variety of distributions. At one time or another, I've been a user of Mandrake, SuSe, openSuSe, Fedora, RedHat, Ubuntu, Mint, Linux Mint Debian Edition (basically Debian testing but more green) and, for the past few years, Arch. My Linux expertise, such as it is, is mostly on manipulating text and regular expressions since that represents a large chunk of my daily work.

Updated on June 04, 2022

Comments

terdon almost 2 years
I have the following data frame in R:
```
> dframe
                Mean Median
Candidates     85.68     60
NonCands        9.21      4
Multi          27.48     17
Mono            4.43      3
Multi NonCands 22.23     15
```
I want to print it into a file and keep it nicely formatted and aligned just as shown above. I use:
```
write.table(dframe,file="test",sep="\t", quote=F)
```
which produces the following output:
```
Mean    Median
Candidates  85.68   60
NonCands    9.21    4
Multi   27.48   17
Mono    4.43    3
Multi NonCands  22.23   15
```
Since the data is displayed properly formatted within the R environment I thought it should be trivial to write it to a file with the same format. Apparently I was wrong. I have tried playing with format() and write.matrix from the MASS library but neither produces the desired result.

I have seen some suggestions like this one, but it seems both too complicated and, more importantly, does not produce the desired result when printing to a file with write.table().

So, how can I print my data frame to a text file and have it look just as it does within R?

UPDATE

Following Justin's suggestion from his comment below, I installed the gdata library and used write.fwf. This is almost what I need:
```
write.fwf(dframe,file="test",sep="\t", quote=F, rownames=T)
```
produces the following output:
```
Mean    Median
Candidates      85.68   60
NonCands         9.21    4
Multi           27.48   17
Mono             4.43    3
Multi NonCands  22.23   15
```
So, any ideas on how to get "Mean" and "Median" shifted to the right so they align with their respective columns?

Since it may now be relevant, here is how the data.frame was created:
```
labels<-c("Candidates","NonCands","Multi", "Mono", "Multi NonCands")
Mean <- c(mean(cands), mean(non),mean(multi),mean(mono),mean(multi_non))
Median <- c(median(cands), median(non),median(multi),median(mono),median(multi_non))
names(Mean)<-labels
dframe<-data.frame(Mean,Median)
```
- Justin over 11 years
  
  take a look at write.fwf from the gdata package. fwf stands for fixed width file. however, if the font used to view a text file isn't fixed width, it might not be even.
Sezen almost 11 years

You may experience getOption("max.print") issue if the number of rows are greater than max.print value.
Sezen almost 11 years

@MatthewPlourde, please see my answer below, is there a way to get rid of row names/numbers in your simple solution?
Matthew Plourde almost 11 years

@Sezen You could convert the data.frame to a matrix and set them all to the empty character.
terdon almost 9 years

How does this print to a file?
jnas almost 9 years

It does not. I focused on the question of formatting the data frame.
terdon almost 9 years

Thanks, but the dataframe is displayed perfectly in R. The question is about printing it to a file, so your answer is not really relevant here.
jnas almost 9 years

capture.output takes a file parameter itself, too.
jnas almost 9 years

Rewrote the answer completely
AF7 over 6 years

Unfortunately in using the latest R... Error in trim(d[, i]) : could not find function "trim"
Krister Janmore almost 3 years

sep="\n" gives a "bad argument" error from capture.output() for me in R 4.0.2. Dropping it seems to give fine output.