spicy_print_table: Print a spicy-formatted ASCII table

In spicy: Descriptive Statistics and Data Management Tools

Print a spicy-formatted ASCII table

Description

User-facing helper that prints a visually aligned, spicy-styled ASCII table created by functions such as freq() or cross_tab(). It automatically adjusts column alignment, spacing, and separators for improved readability in console outputs.

This function wraps the internal renderer build_ascii_table(), adding optional titles, notes, and automatic alignment rules depending on the type of table.

Usage

spicy_print_table(
  x,
  title = attr(x, "title"),
  note = attr(x, "note"),
  padding = c("compact", "normal", "wide"),
  first_column_line = TRUE,
  row_total_line = TRUE,
  column_total_line = TRUE,
  bottom_line = FALSE,
  lines_color = "darkgrey",
  align_left_cols = NULL,
  ...
)

Arguments

x	A spicy_table or data.frame to be printed.
title	Optional title displayed above the table. Defaults to the "title" attribute of x if present.
note	Optional note displayed below the table. Defaults to the "note" attribute of x if present.
padding	Character string controlling horizontal spacing between columns: "compact" - minimal spacing "normal" - moderate spacing (default) "wide" - extra spacing (for wide displays)
first_column_line	Logical. If TRUE (the default), adds a vertical separator after the first column.
row_total_line, column_total_line, bottom_line	Logical flags controlling the presence of horizontal lines before total rows/columns or at the bottom of the table. Both row_total_line and column_total_line default to TRUE; bottom_line defaults to FALSE.
lines_color	Character. Color for table separators. Defaults to "darkgrey". Only applied if the output supports ANSI colors (see crayon::has_color()).
align_left_cols	Integer vector of column indices to left-align. If NULL (the default), alignment is auto-detected based on x: For freq tables -> c(1, 2) For cross tables -> 1
...	Additional arguments passed to build_ascii_table().

Details

spicy_print_table() detects whether the table represents frequencies (freq-style) or cross-tabulations (cross-style) and adjusts formatting accordingly:

• For frequency tables, the first two columns (Category and Values) are left-aligned.

• For cross tables, only the first column (row variable) is left-aligned.

The function supports Unicode line-drawing characters and colored separators using the crayon package, with graceful fallback to monochrome output when color is not supported.

Value

Invisibly returns x, after printing the formatted ASCII table to the console.

See Also

build_ascii_table() for the underlying text rendering engine. print.spicy_freq_table() for the specialized printing method used by freq().

Examples

# Simple demonstration
df <- data.frame(
  Category = c("Valid", "", "Missing", "Total"),
  Values = c("Yes", "No", "NA", ""),
  Freq. = c(12, 8, 1, 21),
  Percent = c(57.1, 38.1, 4.8, 100.0)
)

spicy_print_table(df,
  title = "Frequency table: Example",
  note = "Class: data.frame\nData: demo"
)

spicy documentation built on March 14, 2026, 5:06 p.m.