CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rgraphics
dayne
dayne

Reputation: 7784

Why do cat and text handle spaces differently?

I am trying to plot some summary information as text on a plot, using the text function. What I do not understand is why text interprets spaces differently than cat.

Simple exmaple:

spaces <- function(x) paste(rep(" ", x), collapse = "")
vals <- c(1000, 5)
e <- paste0(spaces(3), "val1", spaces(8), "val2\n",
            "v: ", vals[1], spaces(12 - nchar(vals[1])), vals[2])

> cat(e) # Gives exactly the output I want
   val1        val2
v: 1000        5

plot(0, type = "n", bty = "n", xaxt = "n", yaxt = "n", ylab = "", 
     xlab = "", xlim = c(0, 5), ylim = c(0, 5))
text(y = 4, x = 1, labels = e, adj = c(0, 1))

<code>text</code> does not handle the spaces correctly.

As you can see, text does not handle the spaces the same as the console output. I want things to line up nicely, like they do in the console output. How can I modify the object, or the call to text so that the plotted version mirrors the console output?

I also tried using: 

spaces <- function(x) paste(rep("\t", x), collapse = "")

Upvotes: 1

Views: 75

Answers (1)

dayne
dayne

Reputation: 7784

Based on the very helpful comments from @Jongware, setting par$family works well for my purposes:

par(family = "mono")
plot(0, type = "n", bty = "n", xaxt = "n", yaxt = "n", ylab = "", 
     xlab = "", xlim = c(0, 5), ylim = c(0, 5))
text(y = 4, x = 1, labels = e, adj = c(0, 1))

enter image description here

Upvotes: 2

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