R - do I need to add explicit new line character with print()?

Question

How do I use the new line character in R?

myStringVariable <- "Very Nice ! I like";

myStringVariabel <- paste(myStringVariable, "\n", sep="");

The above code DOESN'T work

P.S There's significant challenges when googling this kind of stuff since the query "R new line character" does seem to confuse google. I really wish R had a different name.

What is the output you're wanting? does `cat(paste('first line','\n','new line'))` do what you're expecting? R doesn't parse strings unless you ask it to. also [this SO post](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4071586/printing-newlines-with-print-in-r) — Justin, Feb 16 '12 at 19:39

score 162 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 16 '12 at 19:38

162

The nature of R means that you're never going to have a newline in a character vector when you simply print it out.

> print("hello\nworld\n")
[1] "hello\nworld\n"

That is, the newlines are in the string, they just don't get printed as new lines. However, you can use other functions if you want to print them, such as cat:

> cat("hello\nworld\n")
hello
world

answered Feb 16 '12 at 19:38

David Robinson

71,331
13
150
174

15

See also Circle 8.1.22 of 'The R Inferno' http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/R_inferno.pdf – Patrick Burns Feb 17 '12 at 09:20

score 9 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 27 '16 at 18:38

9

Example on NewLine Char:

for (i in 1:5)
  {
   for (j in 1:i)
    {
     cat(j)
    }
    cat("\n")
  }

Result:

edited Feb 27 '16 at 18:38

John Hascall

8,682
4
46
64

answered Feb 21 '16 at 02:13

Areya

101
1
2

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 21 '19 at 22:27

8

You can also use writeLines.

> writeLines("hello\nworld")
hello
world

And also:

> writeLines(c("hello","world"))
hello
world

answered Feb 21 '19 at 22:27

abalter

7,589
12
75
118

R - do I need to add explicit new line character with print()?

3 Answers3

Linked

Related