R help - Nov 2011 - format numbers without leading or trailing 0s

A simple question, but I can't find something to do what I want:

Given: a vector of numbers, like

lambda <- c(0, 0.005, 0.01, 0.02, 0.04, 0.08)

Desired: format them in minimal space for use as plot labels, ie, 
without leading or tailing 0s. For this example:

lambdaf <- c("0", .005", ".01", ".02",
".04", ".08")

-- 
Michael Friendly     Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca
Professor, Psychology Dept.
York University      Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814
4700 Keele Street    Web:   http://www.datavis.ca
Toronto, ONT  M3J 1P3 CANADA

Here's one way to get rid of leading zeros before the
decimal point:
> gsub("^0\\.", "\\.", as.character(lambda))
[1] "0"    ".005" ".01"  ".02" 
".04"  ".08"

Sarah

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Michael Friendly <friendly at yorku.ca>
wrote:
> A simple question, but I can't find something to do what I want:
>
> Given: a vector of numbers, like
>
> lambda <- c(0, 0.005, 0.01, 0.02, 0.04, 0.08)
>
> Desired: format them in minimal space for use as plot labels, ie, without
> leading or tailing 0s. For this example:
>
> lambdaf <- c("0", .005", ".01",
".02", ".04", ".08")
>
> --

-- 
Sarah Goslee
http://www.functionaldiversity.org

Omitting the leading zero is dangerous, since the decimal point can disappear in
a poor hardcopy leading to later misinterpretation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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DCN:<jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us>        Basics: ##.#.       ##.#.  Live
Go...
                                      Live:   OO#.. Dead: OO#..  Playing
Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries            O.O#.       #.O#.  with
/Software/Embedded Controllers)               .OO#.       .OO#.  rocks...1k
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Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

Michael Friendly <friendly at yorku.ca> wrote:
>A simple question, but I can't find something to do what I want:
>
>Given: a vector of numbers, like
>
>lambda <- c(0, 0.005, 0.01, 0.02, 0.04, 0.08)
>
>Desired: format them in minimal space for use as plot labels, ie, 
>without leading or tailing 0s. For this example:
>
>lambdaf <- c("0", .005", ".01", ".02",
".04", ".08")
>
>-- 
>Michael Friendly     Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca
>Professor, Psychology Dept.
>York University      Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814
>4700 Keele Street    Web:   http://www.datavis.ca
>Toronto, ONT  M3J 1P3 CANADA
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide
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>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.