String formatting with sprintf in R Programming - Mini Project: Build & Apply

String formatting with sprintf

📖 Scenario: You are preparing a report that shows the prices of fruits in a neat format. You want to display the fruit name and its price with exactly two decimal places.

🎯 Goal: Build a small R program that uses sprintf to format fruit prices as strings with two decimal places.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a character vector called fruits with the values "Apple", "Banana", and "Cherry".

Create a numeric vector called prices with the values 1.2, 0.5, and 2.35.

Create a format string variable called format_str with the value "%s: $%.2f".

Use sprintf with format_str, fruits, and prices to create a character vector called formatted_prices.

Print the formatted_prices vector.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Formatting prices or other data neatly is common in reports, invoices, and user interfaces.

💼 Career

Knowing how to format strings precisely is useful for data presentation and creating readable outputs in data analysis and software development.

1

Create the fruit and price vectors

Create a character vector called fruits with the values "Apple", "Banana", and "Cherry". Also create a numeric vector called prices with the values 1.2, 0.5, and 2.35.

R Programming

# Create the fruits and prices vectors
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the c() function to create vectors in R.

2

Create the format string

Create a variable called format_str and set it to the string "%s: $%.2f" which will format a fruit name and its price with two decimal places.

R Programming

fruits <- c("Apple", "Banana", "Cherry")
prices <- c(1.2, 0.5, 2.35)
# Create the format string variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The format string uses %s for strings and %.2f for floating numbers with 2 decimals.

3

Format the prices using sprintf

Use sprintf with format_str, fruits, and prices to create a character vector called formatted_prices.

R Programming

fruits <- c("Apple", "Banana", "Cherry")
prices <- c(1.2, 0.5, 2.35)
format_str <- "%s: $%.2f"
# Use sprintf to create formatted_prices
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Pass the format string first, then the vectors to sprintf.

4

Print the formatted prices

Print the formatted_prices vector to display the formatted fruit prices.

R Programming

fruits <- c("Apple", "Banana", "Cherry")
prices <- c(1.2, 0.5, 2.35)
format_str <- "%s: $%.2f"
formatted_prices <- sprintf(format_str, fruits, prices)
# Print the formatted_prices vector
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(formatted_prices) to show the result.