How to correctly display footnote marker in header using kableExtra::kable() function in R

Question

I want to use kable() from the kableExtra package in R to add a footnote marker using the footnote_marker_number() function to a header item, specifically through the add_header_above() function. In this specific case, the documentation specifies that the double_escape argument is set to TRUE. I have done this, but I cannot get the table to properly display the footnote marker. Here is a reproducible example of what I tried:

library(tidyverse)
library(kableExtra)

kw0 <- paste0("test",footnote_marker_number(1,double_escape = T))

mtcars %>%
  kbl("html",escape=F,booktabs=T) %>%
  add_header_above(header = c(" " = 6,
                   setNames(6,kw0))) %>%
  footnote(number = c("test"))

I expect to see the correct display of the marker, instead, I see test<sup>1</sup> in the table. I have looked at similar questions here on Stack Overflow (kableExtra: Dynamic add_header_above labeling) but this has not resolved the problem. Would appreciate any guidance on this.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 27 '21 at 14:13

You need to add escape = FALSE to the add_header_above argument.

Here is the solution:

library(tidyverse)
library(kableExtra)

kw0 <- paste0("test",footnote_marker_number(1, double_escape = T))

mtcars %>%
  kbl("html",escape=F,booktabs=T) %>%
  add_header_above(header = c(" " = 6,
                              setNames(6,kw0)), escape = F) %>%
  footnote(number = c("test"))

-output

How to correctly display footnote marker in header using kableExtra::kable() function in R

1 Answers1