formatDL {base}

R Documentation

Format Description Lists

Description

Format vectors of items and their descriptions as 2-column tables or LaTeX-style description lists.

Usage

formatDL(x, y, style = c("table", "list"),
         width = 0.9 * getOption("width"), indent = NULL)

Arguments

x	a vector giving the items to be described, or a list of length 2 or a matrix with 2 columns giving both items and descriptions.
y	a vector of the same length as x with the corresponding descriptions. Only used if x does not already give the descriptions.
style	a character string specifying the rendering style of the description information. If "table", a two-column table with items and descriptions as columns is produced (similar to Texinfo's @table environment. If "list", a LaTeX-style tagged description list is obtained.
width	a positive integer giving the target column for wrapping lines in the output.
indent	a positive integer specifying the indentation of the second column in table style, and the indentation of continuation lines in list style. Must not be greater than width/2, and defaults to width/3 for table style and width/9 for list style.

Details

After extracting the vectors of items and corresponding descriptions from the arguments, both are coerced to character vectors.

In table style, items with more than indent - 3 characters are displayed on a line of their own.

Value

a character vector with the formatted entries.

Examples

## Use R to create the 'INDEX' for package 'splines' from its 'CONTENTS'
x <- read.dcf(file = system.file("CONTENTS", package = "splines"),
               fields = c("Entry", "Description"))
x <- as.data.frame(x)
writeLines(formatDL(x$Entry, x$Description))
## or equivalently: writeLines(formatDL(x))
## Same information in tagged description list style:
writeLines(formatDL(x$Entry, x$Description, style = "list"))
## or equivalently: writeLines(formatDL(x, style = "list"))

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