How can I make R print printed column names vertically?

Question

I believe in meaningful variable names. Unfortunately this often means that there are huge white gaps when I look at a data.frame in the R console:

Is there a way to tell R to print the column names vertically, like this:

It doesn't need to be in the console, maybe it is possible to plot a table to PDF that way?

Executable code, provided by Ben Bolker:

sample.table <- data.frame(a.first.long.variable.name=rep(1,7),
                           another.long.variable.name=rep(1,7),
                           this.variable.name.is.even.longer.maybe=rep(1,7)
                           )

Please provide your code as text so readers can copy and paste it into their R console. — G. Grothendieck, Nov 22 '15 at 12:25
I guess you could render it as an HTML table and apply rotation via CSS. E.g. `library(DT); datatable(setNames(mtcars, sprintf('
%s
', names(mtcars))), escape = F) ` (Maybe you can apply `formatStyle` to column headers, but I didn't see how) — lukeA, Nov 22 '15 at 12:32
@lukeA do you mind making your comment as answer, can't get it to work... — zx8754, Oct 11 '17 at 12:10
@zx8754 Did you try it in the Browser or just in the RStudio Viewer? Still seems to work for me in a browser. — lukeA, Oct 11 '17 at 14:33
@lukeA Yes, right, it works in a browser but not in a viewer. Please post as an answer. — zx8754, May 29 '18 at 08:44

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered May 29 '18 at 11:16

5

As described in the comments, you may apply rotation via CSS:

library(DT)
df <- mtcars
names(df) <- sprintf('<div style="transform:rotate(-90deg);margin-top:30px;">%s</div>', names(df))
dt <- datatable(df, escape = FALSE)
htmlwidgets::saveWidget(dt, tf<-tempfile(fileext = ".html"))
shell.exec(tf)

This does not work in the RStudio Viewer, however it does work in the browser:

answered May 29 '18 at 11:16

lukeA

53,097
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Any way to adjust the height of column names? For example, try above code with `colnames(df)[1] <- "looooong_naaaame"` – zx8754 May 29 '18 at 11:22
1

@zx8754 Add something in the veins of `line-height:100px` to the css? – lukeA May 29 '18 at 13:28
Did you find out how to change the line height? Would like to use it too – Mark Jan 15 '19 at 23:42

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 01 '16 at 22:05

Not without using a graphics device. A better and simpler workaround which works in a plain old console is: Print the transpose of the table, now column-names become row-names:

> t(sample.table)
                                        1 2 3 4 5 6 7
a.first.long.variable.name              1 1 1 1 1 1 1
another.long.variable.name              1 1 1 1 1 1 1
this.variable.name.is.even.longer.maybe 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

(To suppress the useless column-names you get by default, include sample.table <- data.frame(row.names=1:7, ... )

I do this all the time. Heatmaps, dendrograms, auto-named regression variables from expanding categoricals...

How can I make R print printed column names vertically?

2 Answers2