R View() Function

The View() is a utility function in R that invokes a more intuitive spreadsheet-style data viewer on a matrix-like R object.

View() does not print output in the console or return a value — it is a side-effect function that launches a separate data viewer window. It is ideal for quickly checking data contents, identifying patterns, or verifying data integrity during data analysis workflows.

Syntax

View(x, title)

Ensure you type a capital “V” when using this function.

Parameters

Basic usage

Open RStudio. Create an R file and add the following code.

df <- structure(list(year = c(2016, 2017, 2018, 2019), 
                    length_days = c(365.32, 366.41, 366.53, 364.95)),
 .Names = c("year", "days"),
 class = "data.frame",
 row.names = c(NA, -4L))

View(df)

In this example, we create a data frame using the structure() function.

To see the output, run the above code inside RStudio, and it will give you the following output.

Sorting the data

You can sort the data frame by clicking on one of the columns.

Filtering the data

You can filter the data frame by clicking the Filter icon, selecting a column name, and then entering a range of values.

That’s it.