Pad Strings

Usage

pad(x, padding = max(nchar(as.character(x))), sort = TRUE, type = "detect")

Arguments

x
A character, factor, numeric vector.
padding
Number of characters to pad. Default makes all elements of a string the number of characters of the element with the maximum characters.
sort
logical. If TRUE the outcome is sorted.
type
A character string of "detect", "numeric", "character", "d" or "s". If numeric zeros are padded. If character spaces are padded. The detect attempts to determine if x is numeric (d) or not (s).

Value

Returns a character vector every element padded with 0/spaces.

Description

A convenience wrapper for sprintf that pads the front end of strings with spaces or 0s. Useful for creating multiple uniform directories that will maintain correct order.

Note

pad is a wrapper for the sprintf function. pad may behave differently on various platforms in accordance with the documentation for sprintf: "actual implementation will follow the C99 standard and fine details (especially the behaviour under user error) may depend on the platform." See sprintf for more information.

Examples

pad(sample(1:10, 10))
[1] "01" "02" "03" "04" "05" "06" "07" "08" "09" "10"
pad(sample(1:10, 10), sort=FALSE)
[1] "10" "01" "02" "06" "07" "08" "05" "09" "03" "04"
pad(as.character(sample(1:10, 10)))
[1] " 1" " 2" " 3" " 4" " 5" " 6" " 7" " 8" " 9" "10"
pad(as.character(sample(1:10, 10)), sort=FALSE)
[1] " 5" " 1" " 7" " 3" " 2" "10" " 9" " 8" " 6" " 4"
pad(as.character(sample(1:10, 10)), 4)
[1] " 1" " 2" " 3" " 4" " 5" " 6" " 7" " 8" " 9" " 10"
pad(month.name)
[1] " May" " July" " June" " April" " March" " August" " January" " October" " December" " February" [11] " November" "September"

See also

sprintf