stri_sprintf: Format Strings

In stringi: Fast and Portable Character String Processing Facilities

Format Strings

Description

stri_sprintf (synonym: stri_string_format) is a Unicode-aware replacement for and enhancement of the built-in sprintf function. Moreover, stri_printf prints formatted strings.

Usage

stri_sprintf(
  format,
  ...,
  na_string = NA_character_,
  inf_string = "Inf",
  nan_string = "NaN",
  use_length = FALSE
)

stri_string_format(
  format,
  ...,
  na_string = NA_character_,
  inf_string = "Inf",
  nan_string = "NaN",
  use_length = FALSE
)

stri_printf(
  format,
  ...,
  file = "",
  sep = "\n",
  append = FALSE,
  na_string = "NA",
  inf_string = "Inf",
  nan_string = "NaN",
  use_length = FALSE
)

Arguments

format	character vector of format strings
...	vectors (coercible to integer, real, or character)
na_string	single string to represent missing values; if NA, missing values in ... result in the corresponding outputs be missing too; use "NA" for compatibility with base R
inf_string	single string to represent the (unsigned) infinity (NA allowed)
nan_string	single string to represent the not-a-number (NA allowed)
use_length	single logical value; should the number of code points be used when applying modifiers such as %20s instead of the total code point width?
file	see cat
sep	see cat
append	see cat

Details

Vectorized over format and all vectors passed via ....

Unicode code points may have various widths when printed on the console (compare stri_width). These functions, by default (see the use_length argument), take this into account.

These functions are not locale sensitive. For instance, numbers are always formatted in the "POSIX" style, e.g., -123456.789 (no thousands separator, dot as a fractional separator). Such a feature might be added at a later date, though.

All arguments passed via ... are evaluated. If some of them are unused, a warning is generated. Too few arguments result in an error.

Note that stri_printf treats missing values in ... as "NA" strings by default.

All format specifiers supported sprintf are also available here. For the formatting of integers and floating-point values, currently the system std::snprintf() is called, but this may change in the future. Format specifiers are normalized and necessary sanity checks are performed.

Supported conversion specifiers: dioxX (integers) feEgGaA (floats) and s (character strings). Supported flags: - (left-align), + (force output sign or blank when NaN or NA; numeric only), <space> (output minus or space for a sign; numeric only) 0 (pad with 0s; numeric only), # (alternative output of some numerics).

Value

stri_printf is used for its side effect, which is printing text on the standard output or other connection/file. Hence, it returns invisible(NULL).

The other functions return a character vector.

Author(s)

Marek Gagolewski and other contributors

References

printf in glibc, https://man.archlinux.org/man/printf.3

printf format strings – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printf_format_string

See Also

The official online manual of stringi at https://stringi.gagolewski.com/

Gagolewski M., stringi: Fast and portable character string processing in R, Journal of Statistical Software 103(2), 2022, 1-59, \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.18637/jss.v103.i02")}

Other length: %s$%(), stri_isempty(), stri_length(), stri_numbytes(), stri_pad_both(), stri_width()

Examples

stri_printf("%4s=%.3f", c("e", "e\u00b2", "\u03c0", "\u03c0\u00b2"),
    c(exp(1), exp(2), pi, pi^2))

x <- c(
  "xxabcd",
  "xx\u0105\u0106\u0107\u0108",
  stri_paste(
    "\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b",
    "\U0001F3F4\U000E0067\U000E0062\U000E0073\U000E0063\U000E0074\U000E007F",
    "abcd"
  ))
stri_printf("[%10s]", x)  # minimum width = 10
stri_printf("[%-10.3s]", x)  # output of max width = 3, but pad to width of 10
stri_printf("[%10s]", x, use_length=TRUE)  # minimum number of Unicode code points = 10

# vectorization wrt all arguments:
p <- runif(10)
stri_sprintf(ifelse(p > 0.5, "P(Y=1)=%1$.2f", "P(Y=0)=%2$.2f"), p, 1-p)

# using a "preformatted" logical vector:
x <- c(TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, NA, TRUE, FALSE)
stri_sprintf("%s) %s", letters[seq_along(x)], c("\u2718", "\u2713")[x+1])

# custom NA/Inf/NaN strings:
stri_printf("%+10.3f", c(-Inf, -0, 0, Inf, NaN, NA_real_),
    na_string="<NA>", nan_string="\U0001F4A9", inf_string="\u221E")

stri_sprintf("UNIX time %1$f is %1$s.", Sys.time())

# the following do not work in sprintf()
stri_sprintf("%1$#- *2$.*3$f", 1.23456, 10, 3)  # two asterisks
stri_sprintf(c("%s", "%f"), pi)  # re-coercion needed
stri_sprintf("%1$s is %1$f UNIX time.", Sys.time())  # re-coercion needed
stri_sprintf(c("%d", "%s"), factor(11:12))  # re-coercion needed
stri_sprintf(c("%s", "%d"), factor(11:12))  # re-coercion needed

stringi documentation built on Nov. 23, 2023, 5:07 p.m.