R help - Mar 2007 - personalize regression printing?

dear R experts:

I am often struggling with a desire of wanting to change the basic
output that R prints.

For example, a year ago, I wanted to add the mean to the summary()
statement, and eventually got help from friendly souls who showed me
how to copy the summary() routine and then modify it.

now I would like to abbrev some of the output from summary(lm()).  For
example, I want to eliminate the "Residuals" output.  I also am not
quite sure why "Call:" is followed by a new line rather than just with
a continuation of the model itself.  I also wonder why the word
"Coefficients" seems to consume a line without being particularly
helpful.  I wonder if "Coef" could appear before "Estimate Std.
Error"
on the same line.  All these are changes that would allow me to see
more information on the same page.

I do know that I can copy the functions themselves, if I can find
them, and replace them myself.  However, this means that future
versions of R may make changes that I may miss completely.  Its a
solution, yes.

However, my first question is---for summary(lm()), would it make sense
to have more options that control the output?  At least to suppress
the printing of the distribution of the residuals?

A long-term solution, which is easy to suggest for me given that I do
not have to do any work to implement it, would be to allow some
templates that specify how output should be formatted.  R would first
load the system templates, and thereafter any templates that the user
specifies (has overridden).  The R functions would then work according
to the current template.    Talking is easy; Walking is hard, of
course.  Just a suggestion...

Regards,

/iaw

ivo welch wrote:
> dear R experts:
> 
> I am often struggling with a desire of wanting to change the basic
> output that R prints.
> 
> For example, a year ago, I wanted to add the mean to the summary()
> statement, and eventually got help from friendly souls who showed me
> how to copy the summary() routine and then modify it.
> ...
If "m1" is the result from lm(...)
Have you seen str(m1), and str(summary(m1))? One can extract any results
and present them in any fashion in a custom function.

Is there a specific reason you wish to override the summary() function:
why can't you just create your own custom summary function (my.summary()?

Best wishes,

Mark
--
Dr. Mark Wardle
Specialist registrar, Neurology
Cardiff, UK

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007, ivo welch wrote:
> dear R experts:
>
> I am often struggling with a desire of wanting to change the basic
> output that R prints.
>
> For example, a year ago, I wanted to add the mean to the summary()
> statement, and eventually got help from friendly souls who showed me
> how to copy the summary() routine and then modify it.
>
> now I would like to abbrev some of the output from summary(lm()).  For
> example, I want to eliminate the "Residuals" output.  I also am
not
> quite sure why "Call:" is followed by a new line rather than just
with
> a continuation of the model itself.  I also wonder why the word
> "Coefficients" seems to consume a line without being particularly
> helpful.  I wonder if "Coef" could appear before "Estimate
Std. Error"
> on the same line.  All these are changes that would allow me to see
> more information on the same page.
>
This is not what summary( lm(...) ) does.

It is what print( summary( lm(...) ) ) does, (albeit) often automatically.

So you need to look at stats:::print.summary.lm and provide your own 
version.

> I do know that I can copy the functions themselves, if I can find
> them, and replace them myself.  However, this means that future
> versions of R may make changes that I may miss completely.  Its a
> solution, yes.
You need to operate on the value returned by summary.lm. Changes that 
occur 'under the hood' won't affect you.
>
> However, my first question is---for summary(lm()), would it make sense
> to have more options that control the output?  At least to suppress
> the printing of the distribution of the residuals?
>
No. As suggested above, summary(lm(...)) prints nothing.

It should not be too hard to put together your own version of 
print.summary.lm and invoke it when you want your customized output.
> A long-term solution, which is easy to suggest for me given that I do
> not have to do any work to implement it, would be to allow some
> templates that specify how output should be formatted.  R would first
> load the system templates, and thereafter any templates that the user
> specifies (has overridden).  The R functions would then work according
> to the current template.    Talking is easy; Walking is hard, of
> course.  Just a suggestion...
>
> Regards,
>
> /iaw
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
Charles C. Berry                        (858) 534-2098
                                          Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine
E mailto:cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu	         UC San Diego
http://biostat.ucsd.edu/~cberry/         La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901