Format a vector of numeric or duration values as styled time duration strings

Format input values to time duration values whether those input values are numbers or of the difftime class. We can specify which time units any numeric input values have (as weeks, days, hours, minutes, or seconds) and the output can be customized with a duration style (corresponding to narrow, wide, colon-separated, and ISO forms) and a choice of output units ranging from weeks to seconds.

Usage

vec_fmt_duration(
  x,
  input_units = NULL,
  output_units = NULL,
  duration_style = c("narrow", "wide", "colon-sep", "iso"),
  trim_zero_units = TRUE,
  max_output_units = NULL,
  pattern = "{x}",
  use_seps = TRUE,
  sep_mark = ",",
  force_sign = FALSE,
  locale = NULL,
  output = c("auto", "plain", "html", "latex", "rtf", "word")
)

Arguments

x

The input vector

vector(numeric|integer) // required

This is the input vector that will undergo transformation to a character vector of the same length. Values within the vector will be formatted.

input_units

Declaration of duration units for numerical values

scalar<character> // default: NULL (optional)

If one or more selected columns contains numeric values (not difftime values, which contain the duration units), a keyword must be provided for input_units for gt to determine how those values are to be interpreted in terms of duration. The accepted units are: "seconds", "minutes", "hours", "days", and "weeks".

output_units

Choice of output units

mult-kw:[weeks|days|hours|minutes|seconds] // default: NULL (optional)

Controls the output time units. The default, NULL, means that gt will automatically choose time units based on the input duration value. To control which time units are to be considered for output (before trimming with trim_zero_units) we can specify a vector of one or more of the following keywords: "weeks", "days", "hours", "minutes", or "seconds".

duration_style

Style for representing duration values

singl-kw:[narrow|wide|colon-sep|iso] // default: "narrow"

A choice of four formatting styles for the output duration values. With "narrow" (the default style), duration values will be formatted with single letter time-part units (e.g., 1.35 days will be styled as "1d 8h 24m"). With "wide", this example value will be expanded to "1 day 8 hours 24 minutes" after formatting. The "colon-sep" style will put days, hours, minutes, and seconds in the "([D]/)[HH]:[MM]:[SS]" format. The "iso" style will produce a value that conforms to the ISO 8601 rules for duration values (e.g., 1.35 days will become "P1DT8H24M").

trim_zero_units

Trimming of zero values

scalar<logical>|mult-kw:[leading|trailing|internal] // default: TRUE

Provides methods to remove output time units that have zero values. By default this is TRUE and duration values that might otherwise be formatted as "0w 1d 0h 4m 19s" with trim_zero_units = FALSE are instead displayed as "1d 4m 19s". Aside from using TRUE/FALSE we could provide a vector of keywords for more precise control. These keywords are: (1) "leading", to omit all leading zero-value time units (e.g., "0w 1d" -> "1d"), (2) "trailing", to omit all trailing zero-value time units (e.g., "3d 5h 0s" -> "3d 5h"), and "internal", which removes all internal zero-value time units (e.g., "5d 0h 33m" -> "5d 33m").

max_output_units

Maximum number of time units to display

scalar<numeric|integer>(val>=1) // default: NULL (optional)

If output_units is NULL, where the output time units are unspecified and left to gt to handle, a numeric value provided for max_output_units will be taken as the maximum number of time units to display in all output time duration values. By default, this is NULL and all possible time units will be displayed. This option has no effect when duration_style = "colon-sep" (only output_units can be used to customize that type of duration output).

pattern

Specification of the formatting pattern

scalar<character> // default: "{x}"

A formatting pattern that allows for decoration of the formatted value. The formatted value is represented by the {x} (which can be used multiple times, if needed) and all other characters will be interpreted as string literals.

use_seps

Use digit group separators

scalar<logical> // default: TRUE

An option to use digit group separators. The type of digit group separator is set by sep_mark and overridden if a locale ID is provided to locale. This setting is TRUE by default.

sep_mark

Separator mark for digit grouping

scalar<character> // default: ","

The string to use as a separator between groups of digits. For example, using sep_mark = "," with a value of 1000 would result in a formatted value of "1,000". This argument is ignored if a locale is supplied (i.e., is not NULL).

force_sign

Forcing the display of a positive sign

scalar<logical> // default: FALSE

Should the positive sign be shown for positive values (effectively showing a sign for all values except zero)? If so, use TRUE for this option. By default only negative values will display a minus sign.

locale

Locale identifier

scalar<character> // default: NULL (optional)

An optional locale identifier that can be used for formatting values according the locale's rules. Examples include "en" for English (United States) and "fr" for French (France). We can use the info_locales() function as a useful reference for all of the locales that are supported. A locale ID can be also set in the initial gt() function call (where it would be used automatically by any function with a locale argument) but a locale value provided here will override that global locale.

output

Output format

The output style of the resulting character vector. This can either be "auto" (the default), "plain", "html", "latex", "rtf", or "word". In knitr rendering (i.e., Quarto or R Markdown), the "auto" option will choose the correct output value

Value

A character vector.

Output units for the colon-separated duration style

The colon-separated duration style (enabled when duration_style = "colon-sep") is essentially a clock-based output format which uses the display logic of chronograph watch functionality. It will, by default, display duration values in the (D/)HH:MM:SS format. Any duration values greater than or equal to 24 hours will have the number of days prepended with an adjoining slash mark. While this output format is versatile, it can be changed somewhat with the output_units option. The following combinations of output units are permitted:

c("minutes", "seconds") -> MM:SS
c("hours", "minutes") -> HH:MM
c("hours", "minutes", "seconds") -> HH:MM:SS
c("days", "hours", "minutes") -> (D/)HH:MM

Any other specialized combinations will result in the default set being used, which is c("days", "hours", "minutes", "seconds")

Examples

Let's create a difftime-based vector for the next few examples:

difftimes <-
  difftime(
    lubridate::ymd("2017-01-15"),
    lubridate::ymd(c("2015-06-25", "2016-03-07", "2017-01-10"))
  )

Using vec_fmt_duration() with its defaults provides us with a succinct vector of formatted durations.

vec_fmt_duration(difftimes)

#> [1] "81w 3d" "44w 6d" "5d"

We can elect to use just only the time units of days to describe the duration values.

vec_fmt_duration(difftimes, output_units = "days")

#> [1] "570d" "314d" "5d"

We can also use numeric values in the input vector vec_fmt_duration(). Here's a numeric vector for use with examples:

num_vals <- c(3.235, 0.23, 0.005, NA)

The necessary thing with numeric values as an input is defining what time unit those values have.

vec_fmt_duration(num_vals, input_units = "days")

#> [1] "3d 5h 38m 24s" "5h 31m 12s" "7m 12s" "NA"

We can define a set of output time units that we want to see.

vec_fmt_duration(
  num_vals,
  input_units = "days",
  output_units = c("hours", "minutes")
)

#> [1] "77h 38m" "5h 31m" "7m" "NA"

There are many duration 'styles' to choose from. We could opt for the "wide" style.

vec_fmt_duration(
  num_vals,
  input_units = "days",
  duration_style = "wide"
)

#> [1] "3 days 5 hours 38 minutes 24 seconds"
#> [2] "5 hours 31 minutes 12 seconds"
#> [3] "7 minutes 12 seconds"
#> [4] "NA"

We can always perform locale-specific formatting with vec_fmt_duration(). Let's attempt the same type of duration formatting as before with the "nl" locale.

vec_fmt_duration(
  num_vals,
  input_units = "days",
  duration_style = "wide",
  locale = "nl"
)

#> [1] "3 dagen 5 uur 38 minuten 24 seconden"
#> [2] "5 uur 31 minuten 12 seconden"
#> [3] "7 minuten 12 seconden"
#> [4] "NA"

Function ID

15-16

Function Introduced

v0.7.0 (Aug 25, 2022)