justify hard coded in format.ftable

Thanks for the links. I agree that such a feature would be a nice addition, and could make ftable even more useful.

In the same spirit, I think it could be useful to mention the undocumented base::as.data.frame.matrix function in documentation of table and xtabs (in addition to the already mentioned base::as.data.frame.table). The conversion from ftable/table/xtabs to data.frame is a common task that some users seem to struggle with (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10758961/how-to-convert-a-table-to-a-data-frame).

tab <- table(warpbreaks$wool, warpbreaks$tension)
as.data.frame(tab) # reshaped table
as.data.frame.matrix(tab) # non-reshaped table

To sum up, for the sake of clarity, these proposals address two different topics:
- The justify argument would reduce the need to reformat the exported ftable
- An ftable2df-like function (and the mention of as.data.frame.matrix in the documentation) would facilitate the reuse of ftable results for further analysis.

Thank you very much,

Thomas

If you are looking at ftable could you also consider adding a way to convert an ftable into a usable data.frame such as the ftable2df function defined here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11141406/reshaping-an-array-to-data-frame/11143126#11143126

and there is an example of using it here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61333663/manipulating-an-array-into-a-data-frame-in-base-r/61334756#61334756

Being able to move back and forth between various base class representations seems like something that would be natural to provide.

Thanks.

On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 5:32 AM Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:

SOEIRO Thomas
    on Wed, 13 May 2020 20:27:15 +0000 writes:

Dear all,
I haven't received any feedback so far on my proposal to make

"justify" argument available in stats:::format.ftable

Is this list the appropriate place for this kind of proposal?

Yes, it is.. Actually such a post is even a "role model" post for
R-devel.

I hope this follow-up to my message won't be taken as rude. Of course it's not meant to be, but I'm not used to the R mailing lists...

well, there could be said much, and many stories told here ... ;-)

Thank you in advance for your comments,

Best,
Thomas

The main reasons for "no reaction" (for such nice post) probably are
combination of the following

- we are busy
- if we have time, we think other things are more exciting
- we have not used ftable much/at all and are not interested.

Even though the first 2 apply to me, I'll have a 2nd look into your
post now, and may end up well agreeing with your proposal.

Martin Maechler
ETH Zurich  and  R Core team

Dear all,

justify argument is hard coded in format.ftable:

cbind(apply(LABS, 2L, format, justify = "left"),
apply(DATA, 2L, format, justify = "right"))

It would be useful to have the possibility to modify the argument between c("left", "right", "centre", "none") as in format.default.

The lines could be changed to:

if(length(justify) != 2)
stop("justify must be length 2")
cbind(apply(LABS, 2L, format, justify = justify[1]),
apply(DATA, 2L, format, justify = justify[2]))

The argument justify could defaults to c("left", "right") for backward compatibility.

It could then allow:
ftab <- ftable(wool + tension ~ breaks, warpbreaks)
format.ftable(ftab, justify = c("none", "none"))

Best regards,

Thomas