[Rd] Suppressing Scientific Notation

[Prof Brian Ripley]

A couple of hints:

1) You don't need to touch the internal code for options: you can just
set options(scipen=100), or rely on it being unset for the default.

2) I would do something like

    R_print.scipen = asInteger(GetOption(install("scipen"), rho));
    if(R_print.scipen == NA_INTEGER) R_print.scipen = 0;

Your way you need GetOptionSciPen defined in some common header.

I believe (but have not checked) that if options("scipen") is not defined
then GetOption(install("scipen"), rho) will be NULL and asInteger(NULL) 
will be NA_INTEGER, but it might well be worth being more cautious.


On Fri, 2 May 2003, David Brahm wrote:

> R gurus,
> 
> Every so often(*) someone asks how to suppress scientific notation in
> printing, so I thought I'd give it a shot, but I need some help.
> 
> The formatting decision is made(**) on line 286 of src/main/format.c :
> 
>     if (mF <= *m) { /* IFF it needs less space : "F" (Fixpoint) format */
> 
> where mF is the number of characters for "normal" printing and *m is the number
> of characters for scientific notation.  If mf <= *m, then parameters are set
> that cause "normal" printing.  My idea was to introduce a "penalty" for
> scientific notation, which changes line 286 to:
> 
>     if (mF <= *m + R_print.scipen) {
> 
> R_print.scipen is an integer (defaulting to 0) set with "options":
>   R> options(scipen=99)
> 
> I tried to copy the code for R_print.digits (as in "options(digits=7)")
> wherever I found it, notably in the struct "R_print_par_t" defined in Print.h.
> I changed main/options.c and main/print.c, as detailed in the diff output
> below.  But I must have done it wrong because my version of R crashes with:
>   > Error: bad value
>   > Segmentation fault
> 
> Can anyone more familiar with options() help?  How do you add a new option
> parameter?  Thanks!
> 

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595