[R] Data.frame columns in R console

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "Petr" == Petr Pikal <petr.pikal at precheza.cz>
>>>>>     on Fri, 09 Feb 2007 09:42:13 +0100 writes:

    Petr> Hi
    Petr> On 9 Feb 2007 at 10:17, Lauri Nikkinen wrote:

    >> Thank you for your answer. When I set options(width=250) I still get
    >> the same result when I print the data.frame on my Rgui console (R
    >> 2.4.1, Windows XP). Colums become underneath each other. I also get an
    >> error (?) message  
    >> [ reached getOption("max.print") -- omitted 3462 rows ]]. 

As Petr explains below (and Brian Ripley), you
*really* should use different means here ---
but I think this is the first time that  the relatively new
option 'max.print' has "hit R-help", hence one other hint, maybe
useful to the public:

Note that the 'max.print' option was introduced exactly for the
purpose of **protecting** the inadvertent user from a flood of output
spilling into his console/gui/..
(and apparently locking up R completely, we have even seen
 crashes when people wanted to print dataframes/matrices/arrays
 with millions of entries).

So, given the above message (yes, not an error),
why did you not try to read
     help(getOption)
and look for the word 'max.print' there ?

--> if you really really don't want to follow the advice of
Brian and Petr, then say something like
      options(max.print = 1e6)

Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich


    >> For example if I have a data.frame with 4000 rows and 200
    >> columns I would like to be able to use scroll bars in
    >> Rconsole to investigate the whole data.frame.

    Petr> I am not sure if it is the best idea. You shall probably use other 
    Petr> means for checking your data frame.

    Petr> Try ?summary, ?str or if you really want to check all values in data 
    Petr> frame you can use

    Petr> invisible(edit(test))

    Petr> to open a spreadsheet like editor.

    Petr> HTH
    Petr> Petr