[Rd] NA printing

[Marc Schwartz]

On Jan 25, 2011, at 9:34 AM, Robin Hankin wrote:

> Hi.
> 
> I'm writing a print method for an object that includes a numeric matrix
> for which
> the lower diagonal elements are not meaningful.  So I make the lower
> diagonal of my matrix NA and print it.
> 
> But my co-author does not like NA there and wants a dash.
> 
> I have tried coercing the matrix to character, essentially by
> M[is.na(M)] <- "-" but this interferes with the pleasing
> column alignment for numerical matrices.
> 
> How do I make R print "-" instead of "NA"  for NA entries in a numeric
> matrix, without altering the vertical alignment?  Is there such a command
> as
> 
> options(NA_string = "-")
> 
> available?
> 
> best wishes
> 
> Robin Hankin


Robin,

How about this:

set.seed(1)

mat <- matrix(rnorm(16), 4, 4, )

> mat
           [,1]       [,2]       [,3]        [,4]
[1,] -0.6264538  0.3295078  0.5757814 -0.62124058
[2,]  0.1836433 -0.8204684 -0.3053884 -2.21469989
[3,] -0.8356286  0.4874291  1.5117812  1.12493092
[4,]  1.5952808  0.7383247  0.3898432 -0.04493361

mat[lower.tri(mat, diag = TRUE)] <- NA

> mat
     [,1]      [,2]       [,3]       [,4]
[1,]   NA 0.3295078  0.5757814 -0.6212406
[2,]   NA        NA -0.3053884 -2.2146999
[3,]   NA        NA         NA  1.1249309
[4,]   NA        NA         NA         NA

> print.table(mat, na.print = "-")
     [,1] [,2]       [,3]       [,4]      
[1,]    -  0.3295078  0.5757814 -0.6212406
[2,]    -          - -0.3053884 -2.2146999
[3,]    -          -          -  1.1249309
[4,]    -          -          -          -


See the 'na.print' argument in ?print.table

HTH,

Marc Schwartz