CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rprintf
Kusavil
Kusavil

Reputation: 295

How to sprintf vector of mixed types and strings up to n digits precision?

I have a vector consisting of mixed double precision values and very short strings of characters. I want to sprintf them, while showing results up to n digits. The problem is, I can't sprintf strings while using, for example sprintf("%.8g", x), so I am using "%.8s" instead.

Because of that, if R writes the number in scientific notation, I am printing only beginning of the number and the results makes no sense. Simple example of this behaviour below:

koza <- c( pi, " > ", 2.01645169344289e-05)
sprintf("%.8s", koza)

What I receive is:

[1] "3.141592" " > "      "2.016451"

What I want to receive is either something like:

[1] "3.1415927" " > "      "0.0000202"

or

[1] "3.1415927" " > "      "2.0164517e-05"

How can I do that?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1107

Answers (1)

Spacedman
Spacedman

Reputation: 94182

Because you have mixed numbers and strings in this vector:

koza <- c( pi, " > ", 2.01645169344289e-05)

R has converted them all to character strings:

> koza
[1] "3.14159265358979"     " > "                  "2.01645169344289e-05"

So printing with a "%s" formatter will format it as a string, and so you'll only get the first N characters of "2.01645169344289e-05".

> sprintf("%.4s", "abcdefghij")
[1] "abcd"
> sprintf("%.4s", koza)
[1] "3.14" " > "  "2.01"

You need to keep them as numeric as much as possible, format them as decimal numbers, and then paste them into strings.

Upvotes: 1

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