Customizable Object Sensitive Messages

Messages should provide users with readable information about R objects without flooding their console. 'cc()' concatenates vector and data frame values into a grammatically correct string using commas, an ellipsis and conjunction. 'cn()' allows the user to define a string which varies based on a count. 'co()' combines the two to produce a customizable object aware string. The package further facilitates this process by providing five 'sprintf'-like types such as '%n' for the length of an object and '%o' for its name as well as wrappers for pasting objects and issuing errors, warnings and messages.

err is a light-weight R package to produce customizable number and object sensitive error and warning messages.

Demonstration

Object Sensitive

The co functions produce object sensitive strings.

library(err)
 
fox <- c("The", "quick", "brown", "fox", "jumps", "over", "the", "lazy", "dog")
co(fox)
#> [1] "fox has 9 values: 'The', 'quick', 'brown', 'fox', 'jumps', 'over', 'the', 'lazy', 'dog'"
co(fox[1])
#> [1] "fox[1] has 1 value: 'The'"
co(fox[0])
#> [1] "fox[0] has 0 values"
co(fox, nlots = 5)
#> [1] "fox has 9 values: 'The', 'quick', 'brown', ..., 'dog'"

Customizable

The object sensitive strings are fully customized.

one <- "darn! the vector %o of length %n has the following value: %c"
none <- "phew! vector %o is empty"
some <- "rats! vector %o has the following %n element%s: %c"
lots <- "really?! the %n elements of vector %o are too numerous to print"
 
co(fox[0], one = one, none = none, some = some, lots = lots, nlots = 5)
#> [1] "phew! vector fox[0] is empty"
co(fox[1], one = one, none = none, some = some, lots = lots, nlots = 5)
#> [1] "darn! the vector fox[1] of length 1 has the following value: 'The'"
co(fox[1:3], one = one, none = none, some = some, lots = lots, nlots = 5)
#> [1] "rats! vector fox[1:3] has the following 3 elements: 'The', 'quick', 'brown'"
co(fox[1:5], one = one, none = none, some = some, lots = lots, nlots = 5)
#> [1] "really?! the 5 elements of vector fox[1:5] are too numerous to print"

The following sprintf-like types can be used in the custom messages:

• %c: the object as a comma separated list (producted by a cc function)
• %n: the length of the object
• %o: the name of the object
• %s: ‘s’ if n != 1 otherwise ’’
• %r: ‘are’ if n != 1 otherwise ‘is’

And there are various formatting options

co(fox[1:6], conjunction = "or", bracket = "|", oxford = TRUE, ellipsis = 5)
#> [1] "fox[1:6] has 6 values: |The|, |quick|, |brown|, ..., or |over|"

Data Frames

There is also a method for data frames.

cat(co(datasets::mtcars, conjunction = "and", oxford = TRUE, ellipsis = 5))
#> datasets::mtcars has 11 columns
#> mpg: 21, 21, 22.8, ..., and 21.4
#> cyl: 6, 6, 4, ..., and 4
#> disp: 160, 160, 108, ..., and 121
#> ...
#> and carb: 4, 4, 1, ..., and 2

Number Sensitive

The cn function produces number sensitive customizable messages

cn(0)
#> [1] "there are 0 values"
cn(1)
#> [1] "there is 1 value"
cn(2)
#> [1] "there are 2 values"
cn(100, lots = "there %r %n value%s - this is a lot")
#> [1] "there are 100 values - this is a lot"

Warning and Error Messages

The co and cn functions can be combined with the wrappers msg, wrn and err to produce a message, warning and error (without the call as part of the warning/error message).

msg(cn(2))
#> there are 2 values
wrn(cn(2))
#> Warning: there are 2 values
err(cn(2))
#> Error: there are 2 values

Installation

To install the latest development version from GitHub

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("poissonconsulting/err")

To install the latest development version from the Poisson drat repository

# install.packages("drat")
drat::addRepo("poissonconsulting")
install.packages("err")

Citation

To cite package 'err' in publications use:

  Joe Thorley and James Dunham (2018). err: Customizable Object
  Sensitive Messages. R package version 0.0.1.
  https://github.com/poissonconsulting/err

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {err: Customizable Object Sensitive Messages},
    author = {Joe Thorley and James Dunham},
    year = {2018},
    note = {R package version 0.0.1},
    url = {https://github.com/poissonconsulting/err},
  }

Contribution

Please report any issues.

Pull requests are always welcome.

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

Inspiration

concatenate by James Dunham