Print a spicy-formatted ASCII table

User-facing helper that prints a visually aligned, spicy-styled ASCII table created by functions such as freq() or cross_table(). It automatically adjusts column alignment, spacing, and separators for improved readability in console outputs.

This function wraps the internal renderer build_ascii_table(), adding optional titles, notes, and automatic alignment rules depending on the type of table.

Usage

spicy_print_table(
  x,
  title = attr(x, "title"),
  note = attr(x, "note"),
  padding = c("compact", "normal", "wide"),
  first_column_line = TRUE,
  row_total_line = TRUE,
  column_total_line = TRUE,
  bottom_line = TRUE,
  lines_color = "darkgrey",
  align_left_cols = NULL,
  ...
)

Arguments

x

A spicy_table or data.frame to be printed.

title

Optional title displayed above the table. Defaults to the "title" attribute of x if present.

note

Optional note displayed below the table. Defaults to the "note" attribute of x if present.

padding

Character string controlling horizontal spacing between columns:

• "compact" — minimal spacing

• "normal" — moderate spacing (default)

• "wide" — extra spacing (for wide displays)

first_column_line

Logical; if TRUE (default), adds a vertical separator after the first column.

row_total_line, column_total_line, bottom_line

Logical flags controlling the presence of horizontal lines before total rows/columns or at the bottom of the table (default: TRUE for all).

lines_color

Character; color for table separators (default: "darkgrey"). Only applied if the output supports ANSI colors (see crayon::has_color()).

align_left_cols

Integer vector of column indices to left-align. If NULL (default), alignment is auto-detected based on x:

• For freq tables → c(1, 2)

• For cross tables → 1

...

Additional arguments passed to build_ascii_table().

Value

Invisibly returns x, after printing the formatted ASCII table to the console.

Details

spicy_print_table() detects whether the table represents frequencies (freq-style) or cross-tabulations (cross-style) and adjusts formatting accordingly:

• For frequency tables, the first two columns (Category and Values) are left-aligned.

• For cross tables, only the first column (row variable) is left-aligned.

The function supports Unicode line-drawing characters and colored separators using the crayon package, with graceful fallback to monochrome output when color is not supported.

See also

build_ascii_table() for the underlying text rendering engine. print.spicy_freq_table() for the specialized printing method used by freq().

Examples

# Simple demonstration
df <- data.frame(
  Category = c("Valid", "", "Missing", "Total"),
  Values = c("Yes", "No", "NA", ""),
  Freq. = c(12, 8, 1, 21),
  Percent = c(57.1, 38.1, 4.8, 100.0)
)

spicy_print_table(df,
  title = "Frequency table: Example",
  note = "Class: data.frame\nData: demo"
)
#> Frequency table: Example
#>  Category │ Values  Freq.  Percent 
#> ──────────┼────────────────────────
#>  Valid    │ Yes        12     57.1 
#>           │ No          8     38.1 
#>  Missing  │ NA          1      4.8 
#> ──────────┼────────────────────────
#>  Total    │            21      100 
#> ──────────┴────────────────────────
#> Class: data.frame
#> Data: demo