091-knitr-table.Rnw

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{longtable}
\title{Demos of tables with \texttt{kable()} in knitr}
\author{Yihui Xie}
\begin{document}
\maketitle

<<setup, include=FALSE>>=
library(knitr)
# in this document we mainly use results='asis', so set it globally
opts_chunk$set(results='asis')
@

The function \texttt{kable()} is a simple table generator. Unlike
sophisticated packages (e.g. \textbf{xtable}, which has more than 30
arguments), this function only has a minimal number of arguments to generate
simple tables.

<<test-a>>=
library(knitr)
kable(head(iris))
kable(head(iris, 0))
kable(head(iris, 1))
@

\section{No row names}

<<test-b>>=
kable(head(iris), row.names=FALSE)
@

\section{At most 3 digits}

<<test-c>>=
kable(matrix(rnorm(20),4), digits=3)
@

\section{Alignment}

By default, numeric columns are right-aligned, and other columns are
left-aligned.

<<test-d>>=
kable(head(iris), align=c('l', 'c', 'r', 'l', 'r'))
@

\section{Default tables are ugly}

Let's use the \textbf{booktabs} package. The air is suddenly fresh!

<<test-e>>=
kable(head(iris), row.names=FALSE, booktabs=TRUE)
kable(head(iris, 0), row.names=FALSE, booktabs=TRUE)
kable(head(iris, 1), row.names=FALSE, booktabs=TRUE)
kable(head(mtcars[, 1:7]), booktabs=TRUE)
@

\section{Long tables}

<<test-f>>=
kable(mtcars[, 1:7], longtable=TRUE, booktabs=TRUE)
@

\section{Want more features?}

No, that is all I have. You should turn to other packages for help. I'm not
going to reinvent their wheels.

\end{document}