deparse {base}R Documentation

Expression Deparsing

Description

Turn unevaluated expressions into character strings.

Usage

deparse(expr, width.cutoff = 60,
        backtick = mode(expr) %in% c("call", "expression", "("))

Arguments

expr any R expression.
width.cutoff integer in [20, 500] determining the cutoff at which line-breaking is tried.
backtick logical indicating whether symbolic names should be enclosed in backticks if they don't follow the standard syntax.

Details

This function turns unevaluated expressions (where “expression” is taken in a wider sense than the strict concept of a vector of mode "expression" used in expression) into character strings (a kind of inverse parse).

A typical use of this is to create informative labels for data sets and plots. The example shows a simple use of this facility. It uses the functions deparse and substitute to create labels for a plot which are character string versions of the actual arguments to the function myplot.

The default for the backtick option is not to quote single symbols but only composite expressions. This is a compromise to avoid breaking existing code.

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

See Also

substitute, parse, expression.

Examples

require(stats)
deparse(args(lm))
deparse(args(lm), width = 500)
myplot <- function(x, y) {
    plot(x, y, xlab=deparse(substitute(x)),
        ylab=deparse(substitute(y)))
}
e <- quote(`foo bar`)
deparse(e)
deparse(e, backtick=TRUE)
e <- quote(`foo bar`+1)
deparse(e)

[Package Contents]