Within R I need to reformat my data so that the output looks like the following: " 7 WORDS 5550 3.14159 -6. 6." Previous folks were doing this by hand, but I would like to have a formula do it. That is, (a) 7 (place holder) on second column, then a space, (b) WORDS (placeholder) is a string descriptor that is left justified to column 4, (c) 5550 (place hoder) is right justified to column 26, (d) 3.14159 (place holder) is right justified to column 41, (e) -6. (place holder) is right justified to column 53, and (f) 6. (place holder) is right justified to column 66. The basic sprintf commands did not seem like they would get me there, nor did the "paste" capability. After getting the data into that format I plan to use "write" to place the data in an output *.txt file. Thank you for any hints and tips that can be provided.
Output Data Formatting Question
2 messages · Jason Rupert, jim holtman
I don't know why sprintf does not work for you. Here is something close; you will have to work on the spacing but the formating in sprintf lets you specify the field size:
sprintf("%2s %-20s%6d%14.5f", "7", "WORD", 5550, 3.14158)
[1] " 7 WORD 5550 3.14158"
On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Jason Rupert <jasonkrupert at yahoo.com> wrote:
Within R I need to reformat my data so that the output looks like the following: " 7 WORDS ? ? ? ? ? ? ?5550 ? ? ? ? 3.14159 ? ? ? ? -6. ? ? ? ? ? 6." Previous folks were doing this by hand, but I would like to have a formula do it. That is, (a) 7 (place holder) on second column, then a space, (b) WORDS (placeholder) is a string descriptor that is left justified to column 4, (c) 5550 (place hoder) is right justified to column 26, (d) 3.14159 (place holder) is right justified to column 41, (e) -6. (place holder) is right justified to column 53, and (f) 6. (place holder) is right justified to column 66. The basic sprintf commands did not seem like they would get me there, nor did the "paste" capability. After getting the data into that format I plan to use "write" to place the data in an output *.txt file. Thank you for any hints and tips that can be provided.
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Jim Holtman Cincinnati, OH +1 513 646 9390 What is the problem that you are trying to solve?