Print Export Tables

Function returning and displaying or writing to disk the LaTeX or HTML code associated with the supplied object of class xtable.

Usage

# S3 method for class 'xtable'
print(x,
  type = getOption("xtable.type", "latex"),
  file = getOption("xtable.file", ""),
  append = getOption("xtable.append", FALSE),
  floating = getOption("xtable.floating", TRUE),
  floating.environment = getOption("xtable.floating.environment", "table"),
  table.placement = getOption("xtable.table.placement", "ht"),
  caption.placement = getOption("xtable.caption.placement", "bottom"),
  caption.width = getOption("xtable.caption.width", NULL),
  latex.environments = getOption("xtable.latex.environments", c("center")),
  tabular.environment = getOption("xtable.tabular.environment", "tabular"),
  size = getOption("xtable.size", NULL),
  hline.after = getOption("xtable.hline.after", c(-1,0,nrow(x))),
  NA.string = getOption("xtable.NA.string", ""),
  include.rownames = getOption("xtable.include.rownames", TRUE),
  include.colnames = getOption("xtable.include.colnames", TRUE),
  only.contents = getOption("xtable.only.contents", FALSE),
  add.to.row = getOption("xtable.add.to.row", NULL),
  sanitize.text.function = getOption("xtable.sanitize.text.function", NULL),
  sanitize.rownames.function = getOption("xtable.sanitize.rownames.function",
                                         sanitize.text.function),
  sanitize.colnames.function = getOption("xtable.sanitize.colnames.function",
                                         sanitize.text.function),
  math.style.negative = getOption("xtable.math.style.negative", FALSE),
  math.style.exponents = getOption("xtable.math.style.exponents", FALSE),
  html.table.attributes = getOption("xtable.html.table.attributes",
                                    "border=1"),
  print.results = getOption("xtable.print.results", TRUE),
  format.args = getOption("xtable.format.args", NULL),
  rotate.rownames = getOption("xtable.rotate.rownames", FALSE),
  rotate.colnames = getOption("xtable.rotate.colnames", FALSE),
  booktabs = getOption("xtable.booktabs", FALSE),
  scalebox = getOption("xtable.scalebox", NULL),
  width = getOption("xtable.width", NULL),
  comment = getOption("xtable.comment", TRUE),
  timestamp = getOption("xtable.timestamp", date()),
  ...)

Arguments

x: An object of class "xtable".
type: Type of table to produce. Possible values for type are "latex" or "html". Default value is "latex".
file: Name of file where the resulting code should be saved. If file="", output is displayed on screen. Note that the function also (invisibly) returns a character vector of the results (which can be helpful for post-processing). Default value is "".
append: If TRUE and file!="", code will be appended to file instead of overwriting file. Default value is FALSE.
floating: If TRUE and type="latex", the resulting table will be a floating table (using, for example, \begin{table} and \end{table}). See floating.environment below. Default value is TRUE.
floating.environment: If floating=TRUE and type="latex", the resulting table uses the specified floating environment. Possible values include "table", "table*", and other floating environments defined in LaTeX packages. Default value is "table".
table.placement: If floating=TRUE and type="latex", the floating table will have placement given by table.placement where table.placement must be NULL or contain only elements of {"h","t","b","p","!","H"}. Default value is "ht".
caption.placement: The caption will be placed at the bottom of the table if caption.placement is "bottom" and at the top of the table if it equals "top". Default value is "bottom".
caption.width: The caption will be placed in a "parbox" of the specified width if caption.width is not NULL and type="latex". Default value is NULL.
latex.environments: If floating=TRUE and type="latex", the specified LaTeX environments (provided as a character vector) will enclose the tabular environment. Default value is "center".
tabular.environment: When type="latex", the tabular environment that will be used. When working with tables that extend more than one page, using tabular.environment="longtable" with the corresponding LaTeX package (see Fairbairns, 2005) allows one to typeset them uniformly. Note that floating should be set to FALSE when using the longtable environment. Default value is "tabular".
size: A character vector that is inserted just before the tabular environment starts. This can be used to set the font size and a variety of other table settings. Initial backslashes are automatically prefixed, if not supplied by user. Default value is NULL.
hline.after: When type="latex", a vector of numbers between -1 and nrow(x), inclusive, indicating the rows after which a horizontal line should appear. If NULL is used no lines are produced. Repeated values are allowed. Default value is c(-1,0,nrow(x)) which means draw a line before and after the columns names and at the end of the table.
NA.string: String to be used for missing values in table entries. Default value is "".
include.rownames: If TRUE the rows names are printed. Default value is TRUE.
include.colnames: If TRUE the columns names are printed. Default value is TRUE.
only.contents: If TRUE only the rows of the table are printed. Default value is FALSE.
add.to.row: A list of two components. The first component (which should be called 'pos') is a list that contains the position of rows on which extra commands should be added at the end. The second component (which should be called 'command') is a character vector of the same length as the first component, which contains the command that should be added at the end of the specified rows. Default value is NULL, i.e. do not add commands.
sanitize.text.function: All non-numeric entries (except row and column names) are sanitized in an attempt to remove characters which have special meaning for the output format. If sanitize.text.function is not NULL, it should be a function taking a character vector and returning one, and will be used for the sanitization instead of the default internal function. Default value is NULL.
sanitize.rownames.function: Like the sanitize.text.function, but applicable to row names. The default uses the sanitize.text.function.
sanitize.colnames.function: Like the sanitize.text.function, but applicable to column names. The default uses the sanitize.text.function.
math.style.negative: In a LaTeX table, if TRUE, then use $-$ for the negative sign (as was the behavior prior to version 1.5-3). Default value is FALSE.
math.style.exponents: In a LaTeX table, if TRUE or "$$", then use $5 \times 10^{5}$ for 5e5. If "ensuremath", then use \ensuremath{5 \times 10^{5}} for 5e5. If "UTF-8" or "UTF-8", then use UTF-8 to approximate the LaTeX typsetting for 5e5. Default value is FALSE.
html.table.attributes: In an HTML table, attributes associated with the <TABLE> tag. Default value is "border=1".
print.results: If TRUE, the generated table is printed to standard output. Set this to FALSE if you will just be using the character vector that is returned invisibly. Default value is TRUE.
format.args: List of arguments for the formatC function. For example, standard German number separators can be specified as format.args=list(big.mark = "'", decimal.mark = ",")). The arguments digits and format should not be included in this list. See details. Default value is NULL.
rotate.rownames: If TRUE, the row names are displayed vertically in LaTeX. Default value is FALSE.
rotate.colnames: If TRUE, the column names are displayed vertically in LaTeX. Default value is FALSE.
booktabs: If TRUE, the toprule, midrule and bottomrule commands from the LaTeX "booktabs" package are used rather than hline for the horizontal line tags.
scalebox: If not NULL, a scalebox clause will be added around the tabular environment with the specified value used as the scaling factor. Default value is NULL.
width: If not NULL, the specified value is included in parentheses between the tabular environment begin tag and the alignment specification. This allows specification of the table width when using tabular environments such as tabular* and tabularx. Note that table width specification is not supported with the tabular or longtable environments. Default value is NULL.
comment: If TRUE, the version and timestamp comment is included. Default value is TRUE.
timestamp: Timestamp to include in LaTeX comment. Set this to NULL to exclude the timestamp. Default value is date().
...: Additional arguments. (Currently ignored.)

Details

This function displays or writes to disk the code to produce a table associated with an object x of class "xtable". The resulting code is either a LaTeX or HTML table, depending on the value of type. The function also (invisibly) returns a character vector of the results (which can be helpful for post-processing).

Since version 1.4 the non default behavior of hline.after is changed. To obtain the same results as the previous versions add to the hline.after vector the vector c(-1, 0, nrow(x)) where nrow(x) is the numbers of rows of the object.

From version 1.4-3, all non-numeric columns are sanitized, and all LaTeX special characters are sanitized for LaTeX output. See Section 3 of the xtableGallery vignette for an example of customizing the sanitization. From version 1.4-4, the sanitization also applies to column names. To remove any text sanitization, specify sanitize.text.function=function(x){x}.

From version 1.6-1 the default values for the arguments other than x are obtained using getOption(). Hence the user can set the values once with options() rather than setting them in every call to print.xtable().

The argument format.args is used to supply arguments to the formatC function, but will throw an error if values for digits or format are included in the list of arguments. The recommended approach to specify digits is to supply the argument digits to xtable, and to specify format supply the argument display to xtable. See the examples.

Author

David Dahl dahl@stat.byu.edu with contributions and suggestions from many others (see source code).

References

The TeX FAQ, Tables longer than a single page. https://texfaq.org/FAQ-longtab

Examples

df <- data.frame(A = c(1.00123, 33.1, 6),
                 B = c(111111, 3333333, 3123.233))
## The following code gives the error
## formal argument "digits" matched by multiple actual arguments
## print(xtable(df, display = c("s","e","e")),
##       format.args = list(digits = 3, big.mark = " ", decimal.mark = ","))
## specify digits as argument to xtable instead
print(xtable(df, display = c("s","f","f"), digits = 4),
      format.args = list(big.mark = " ", decimal.mark = ","))
#> % latex table generated in R 4.5.1 by xtable 1.8-8 package
#> % Thu Mar  5 20:17:23 2026
#> \begin{table}[ht]
#> \centering
#> \begin{tabular}{rrr}
#>   \hline
#>  & A & B \\ 
#>   \hline
#> 1 & 1,0012 & 111 111,0000 \\ 
#>   2 & 33,1000 & 3 333 333,0000 \\ 
#>   3 & 6,0000 & 3 123,2330 \\ 
#>    \hline
#> \end{tabular}
#> \end{table}
## The following code gives the error
## formal argument "format" matched by multiple actual arguments
## print(xtable(df, digits = 4),
##       format.args = list(format = c("s","e","e"),
##                          big.mark = " ", decimal.mark = ","))
## specify format using display argument in xtable
print(xtable(df, display = c("s","e","e"), digits = 4),
      format.args = list(big.mark = " ", decimal.mark = ","))
#> % latex table generated in R 4.5.1 by xtable 1.8-8 package
#> % Thu Mar  5 20:17:23 2026
#> \begin{table}[ht]
#> \centering
#> \begin{tabular}{rrr}
#>   \hline
#>  & A & B \\ 
#>   \hline
#> 1 & 1,0012e+00 & 1,1111e+05 \\ 
#>   2 & 3,3100e+01 & 3,3333e+06 \\ 
#>   3 & 6,0000e+00 & 3,1232e+03 \\ 
#>    \hline
#> \end{tabular}
#> \end{table}