Skip to contents

Prettify big numbers into a readable format

Source: R/pretty.R
pretty_num.Rd

Uses as.numeric() to force a numeric value and then formats prettily for easy presentation in console messages, reports, or dashboards.

This rounds to 0 decimal places by default, and adds in comma separators.

Expect that this will commonly be used for adding the pound symbol, the percentage symbol, or to have a +/- prefixed based on the value.

If applying over multiple or unpredictable values and you want to preserve a non-numeric symbol such as "x" or "c" for data not available, use the ignore_na = TRUE argument to return those values unaffected.

If you want to customise what NA values are returned as, use the alt_na argument.

This function silences the warning around NAs being introduced by coercion.

Usage

pretty_num(
  value,
  prefix = "",
  gbp = FALSE,
  suffix = "",
  dp = 0,
  ignore_na = FALSE,
  alt_na = FALSE,
  nsmall = NULL
)

Arguments

value

value to be prettified

prefix

prefix for the value, if "+/-" then it will automatically assign + or - based on the value

gbp

whether to add the pound symbol or not, defaults to not

suffix

suffix for the value, e.g. "%"

dp

number of decimal places to round to, 0 by default.

ignore_na

whether to skip function for strings that can't be converted and return original value

alt_na

alternative value to return in place of NA, e.g. "x"

nsmall

minimum number of digits to the right of the decimal point. If NULL, the value of dp will be used. If the value of dp is less than 0, then nsmall will automatically be set to 0.

Value

string featuring prettified value

See also

comma_sep() round_five_up() as.numeric()

Other prettying: pretty_filesize(), pretty_num_table(), pretty_time_taken()

Examples

# On individual values
pretty_num(5789, gbp = TRUE)
#> [1] "£5,789"
pretty_num(564, prefix = "+/-")
#> [1] "+564"
pretty_num(567812343223, gbp = TRUE, prefix = "+/-")
#> [1] "+£568 billion"
pretty_num(11^9, gbp = TRUE, dp = 3)
#> [1] "£2.358 billion"
pretty_num(-11^8, gbp = TRUE, dp = -1)
#> [1] "-£210 million"
pretty_num(43.3, dp = 1, nsmall = 2)
#> [1] "43.30"
pretty_num("56.089", suffix = "%")
#> [1] "56%"
pretty_num("x")
#> [1] NA
pretty_num("x", ignore_na = TRUE)
#> [1] "x"
pretty_num("nope", alt_na = "x")
#> [1] "x"

# Applied over an example vector
vector <- c(3998098008, -123421421, "c", "x")
pretty_num(vector)
#> [1] "4 billion"    "-123 million" NA             NA            
pretty_num(vector, prefix = "+/-", gbp = TRUE)
#> [1] "+£4 billion"   "-£123 million" NA              NA             

# Return original values if NA
pretty_num(vector, ignore_na = TRUE)
#> [1] "4 billion"    "-123 million" "c"            "x"           

# Return alternative value in place of NA
pretty_num(vector, alt_na = "z")
#> [1] "4 billion"    "-123 million" "z"            "z"