Force R not to use exponential notation (e.g. e+10)?
RNumber FormattingOptionsScientific NotationDefaultsR Problem Overview
Can I force R to use regular numbers instead of using the e+10
-like notation? I have:
1.810032e+09
# and
4
within the same vector and want to see:
1810032000
# and
4
I am creating output for an old fashioned program and I have to write a text file using cat
.
That works fine so far but I simply can't use the e+10
notation there.
R Solutions
Solution 1 - R
This is a bit of a grey area. You need to recall that R will always invoke a print method, and these print methods listen to some options. Including 'scipen' -- a penalty for scientific display. From help(options)
:
> ‘scipen’: integer. A penalty to be applied when deciding to print > numeric values in fixed or exponential notation. Positive > values bias towards fixed and negative towards scientific > notation: fixed notation will be preferred unless it is more > than ‘scipen’ digits wider.
Example:
R> ran2 <- c(1.810032e+09, 4)
R> options("scipen"=-100, "digits"=4)
R> ran2
[1] 1.81e+09 4.00e+00
R> options("scipen"=100, "digits"=4)
R> ran2
[1] 1810032000 4
That said, I still find it fudgeworthy. The most direct way is to use sprintf()
with explicit width e.g. sprintf("%.5f", ran2)
.
Solution 2 - R
It can be achieved by disabling scientific notation in R.
options(scipen = 999)
Solution 3 - R
My favorite answer:
format(1810032000, scientific = FALSE)
# [1] "1810032000"
This gives what you want without having to muck about in R settings.
Note that it returns a character string rather than a number object
Solution 4 - R
Put options(scipen = 999)
in your .Rprofile file so it gets auto-executed by default. (Do not rely on doing it manually.)
(This is saying something different to other answers: how?
- This keeps things sane when you thunk between multiple projects, multiple languages on a daily or monthly basis. Remembering to type in your per-project settings is error-prone and not scalable. You can have a global ~/.Rprofile or per-project .Rprofile. Or both, with the latter overriding the former.
- Keeping all your config in a project-wide or global .Rprofile auto-executes it. This is useful for e.g. default package loads, data.table configuration, environment etc. Again, that config can run to a page of settings, and there's zero chance you'll remember those and their syntax and type them in