How to Use sprintf() Function in R

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The sprintf() function in R is used to print the formatted strings. For example, use the sprintf(“%f”, x) function to format a numeric value x with six digits after the decimal point.

Syntax

sprintf(fmt, x)

Parameters

  1. fmt: It is a character vector of format strings, each of up to 8192 bytes.
  2. x: It is the value to format.

Return Value

It returns the character vector of length that of the longest input.

Example 1: Format decimal places

Use format decimal places with sprintf() function
Figure 1: Format decimal places with sprintf() function

The above figure shows that the sprintf() function is used to format and display the value of x with only 2 digits after the decimal point. Let’s implement it into the program.

# Define value
x <- 21.41347382

# Only display 2 digits after decimal place
sprintf("%.2f", x)

Output

[1] "21.41"

Example 2: Format digits before decimal point

Format digits before decimal point

Figure 2: Use sprintf() function to format digits before decimal point

We used the sprintf() function to format and display the value of x as a floating-point number with no digits after the decimal point while ensuring a minimum width of 10 characters for the output.

# Define value
x <- 1219191919192121.48484848

sprintf("%10.f", x)

Output

[1] "1219191919192122"

Example 3: Format value using Scientific Notation

Format Value Using Scientific Notation
Figure 3: Use sprintf() function to format value using scientific notation
rv <- 19.211

sprintf("%e", rv)

You can return the upper case E to the RStudio console.

data <- 19.211

sprintf("%E", data)

Output

[1] "1.921100E+01"

Example 4: Format digits before the decimal point

Format digits before the decimal pointFigure 4: Format digits before the decimal point

rv <- 19.211

sprintf("%1.0f", rv)

Output

[1] "19"

Example 5: Format Digits After Decimal Point

data <- 21.19461118

#only display 2 digits after decimal place
sprintf("%.2f", data)

Output

[1] "21.19"

Example 6: Format a value in String

data <- 21.19461118

sprintf("I am away %.1f miles from Perth city", data)

Output

[1] "I am away 21.2 miles from Perth city"

You can also format multiple values in a string:

x1 <- 21.11
x2 <- 11.21

sprintf("I rode my car %.1f miles and then ran %.2f miles", x1, x2)

Output

[1] "I rode my car 21.1 miles and then ran 11.21 miles"

That’s it.

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