overview: An alternative to 'summary()' inspired by the skimr package

In cheapr: Simple Functions to Save Time and Memory

An alternative to summary() inspired by the skimr package

Description

A cheaper summary() function, designed for larger data.

Usage

overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), ...)

## Default S3 method:
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), ...)

## S3 method for class 'logical'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), ...)

## S3 method for class 'integer'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), hist = TRUE, ...)

## S3 method for class 'numeric'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), hist = TRUE, ...)

## S3 method for class 'integer64'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), hist = TRUE, ...)

## S3 method for class 'character'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), ...)

## S3 method for class 'factor'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), ...)

## S3 method for class 'Date'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), ...)

## S3 method for class 'POSIXt'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), ...)

## S3 method for class 'ts'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), ...)

## S3 method for class 'zoo'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), ...)

## S3 method for class 'data.frame'
overview(x, digits = getOption("cheapr.digits", 2), hist = TRUE, ...)

Arguments

x	A vector or data frame.
digits	How many decimal places should the summary statistics be printed as? Default is 2.
...	Further arguments passed onto methods. Currently unused.
hist	Should in-line histograms be returned? Default is FALSE.

Details

No rounding of statistics is done except in printing which can be controlled either through the digits argument in overview(), or by setting the option options(cheapr.digits).
To access the underlying data, for example the numeric summary, just use ⁠$numeric⁠, e.g. overview(rnorm(30))$numeric.

Value

An object of class "overview". Under the hood this is just a list of data frames. Key summary statistics are reported in each data frame.

Examples

library(cheapr)
overview(iris)

# With histograms
overview(airquality, hist = TRUE)

# Round to 0 decimal places
overview(airquality, digits = 0)

# We can set an option for all overviews
options(cheapr.digits = 1)
overview(rnorm(100))
options(cheapr.digits = 2) # The default

cheapr documentation built on Aug. 8, 2025, 6:06 p.m.