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With numeric values in a vector, we can perform number-based formatting so that the values are rendered to a character vector with some level of precision. The following major options are available:

• decimals: choice of the number of decimal places, option to drop trailing zeros, and a choice of the decimal symbol

• digit grouping separators: options to enable/disable digit separators and provide a choice of separator symbol

• scaling: we can choose to scale targeted values by a multiplier value

• large-number suffixing: larger figures (thousands, millions, etc.) can be autoscaled and decorated with the appropriate suffixes

• pattern: option to use a text pattern for decoration of the formatted values

• locale-based formatting: providing a locale ID will result in number formatting specific to the chosen locale

## Usage

vec_fmt_number(
x,
decimals = 2,
n_sigfig = NULL,
drop_trailing_zeros = FALSE,
drop_trailing_dec_mark = TRUE,
use_seps = TRUE,
accounting = FALSE,
scale_by = 1,
suffixing = FALSE,
pattern = "{x}",
sep_mark = ",",
dec_mark = ".",
force_sign = FALSE,
locale = NULL,
output = c("auto", "plain", "html", "latex", "rtf", "word")
)

## Arguments

x

A numeric vector.

decimals

An option to specify the exact number of decimal places to use. The default number of decimal places is 2.

n_sigfig

A option to format numbers to n significant figures. By default, this is NULL and thus number values will be formatted according to the number of decimal places set via decimals. If opting to format according to the rules of significant figures, n_sigfig must be a number greater than or equal to 1. Any values passed to the decimals and drop_trailing_zeros arguments will be ignored.

drop_trailing_zeros

A logical value that allows for removal of trailing zeros (those redundant zeros after the decimal mark).

drop_trailing_dec_mark

A logical value that determines whether decimal marks should always appear even if there are no decimal digits to display after formatting (e.g, 23 becomes 23.). The default for this is TRUE, which means that trailing decimal marks are not shown.

use_seps

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.

accounting

An option to use accounting style for values. With FALSE (the default), negative values will be shown with a minus sign. Using accounting = TRUE will put negative values in parentheses.

scale_by

A value to scale the input. The default is 1.0. All numeric values will be multiplied by this value first before undergoing formatting. This value will be ignored if using any of the suffixing options (i.e., where suffixing is not set to FALSE).

suffixing

An option to scale and apply suffixes to larger numbers (e.g., 1924000 can be transformed to 1.92M). This option can accept a logical value, where FALSE (the default) will not perform this transformation and TRUE will apply thousands (K), millions (M), billions (B), and trillions (T) suffixes after automatic value scaling. We can also specify which symbols to use for each of the value ranges by using a character vector of the preferred symbols to replace the defaults (e.g., c("k", "Ml", "Bn", "Tr")).

Including NA values in the vector will ensure that the particular range will either not be included in the transformation (e.g, c(NA, "M", "B", "T") won't modify numbers in the thousands range) or the range will inherit a previous suffix (e.g., with c("K", "M", NA, "T"), all numbers in the range of millions and billions will be in terms of millions).

Any use of suffixing (where it is not set expressly as FALSE) means that any value provided to scale_by will be ignored.

pattern

A formatting pattern that allows for decoration of the formatted value. The value itself is represented by {x} and all other characters are taken to be string literals.

sep_mark

The mark to use as a separator between groups of digits (e.g., using sep_mark = "," with 1000 would result in a formatted value of 1,000).

dec_mark

The character to use as a decimal mark (e.g., using dec_mark = "," with 0.152 would result in a formatted value of 0,152).

force_sign

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. The default is FALSE, where only negative numbers will display a minus sign. This option is disregarded when using accounting notation with accounting = TRUE.

locale

An optional locale ID that can be used for formatting the value according the locale's rules. Examples include "en" for English (United States) and "fr" for French (France). The use of a valid locale ID will override any values provided in sep_mark and dec_mark. We can use the info_locales() function as a useful reference for all of the locales that are supported.

output

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.

## Examples

Let's create a numeric vector for the next few examples:

num_vals <- c(5.2, 8.65, 0, -5.3, NA)

Using vec_fmt_number() with the default options will create a character vector where the numeric values have two decimal places and NA values will render as "NA". Also, the rendering context will be autodetected unless specified in the output argument (here, it is of the "plain" output type).

vec_fmt_number(num_vals)

#> [1] "5.20" "8.65" "0.00" "-5.30" "NA"

We can change the decimal mark to a comma, and we have to be sure to change the digit separator mark from the default comma to something else (a period works here):

vec_fmt_number(num_vals, sep_mark = ".", dec_mark = ",")

#> [1] "5,20" "8,65" "0,00" "-5,30" "NA"

If we are formatting for a different locale, we could supply the locale ID and let gt handle these locale-specific formatting options:

vec_fmt_number(num_vals, locale = "fr")

#> [1] "5,20" "8,65" "0,00" "-5,30" "NA"

There are many options for formatting values. Perhaps you need to have explicit positive and negative signs? Use force_sign = TRUE for that.

vec_fmt_number(num_vals, force_sign = TRUE)

#> [1] "+5.20" "+8.65" "0.00" "-5.30" "NA"

Those trailing zeros past the decimal mark can be stripped out by using the drop_trailing_zeros option.

vec_fmt_number(num_vals, drop_trailing_zeros = TRUE)

#> [1] "5.2" "8.65" "0" "-5.3" "NA"

As a last example, one can wrap the values in a pattern with the pattern argument. Note here that NA values won't have the pattern applied.

vec_fmt_number(num_vals, pattern = "{x}")

#> [1] "5.20" "8.65" "0.00" "-5.30" "NA"

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## See also

Other vector formatting functions: vec_fmt_bytes(), vec_fmt_currency(), vec_fmt_datetime(), vec_fmt_date(), vec_fmt_duration(), vec_fmt_engineering(), vec_fmt_fraction(), vec_fmt_integer(), vec_fmt_markdown(), vec_fmt_partsper(), vec_fmt_percent(), vec_fmt_roman(), vec_fmt_scientific(), vec_fmt_time()