Is it possible to store str output in a R object?

Question

I want to extract some information from str output of a dataframe.

Tried this ...

> tmp <- str(iris)
> tmp
NULL

Is it possible to store this in a variable?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22930292/is-it-possible-to-store-str-output-in-a-r-object

Answer 1

You can use capture.output:

l = capture.output(str(mtcars))
l
 [1] "'data.frame':32 obs. of  11 variables:"                         
 [2] " $ mpg : num  21 21 22.8 21.4 18.7 18.1 14.3 24.4 22.8 19.2 ..."  
 [3] " $ cyl : num  6 6 4 6 8 6 8 4 4 6 ..."                            
 [4] " $ disp: num  160 160 108 258 360 ..."                            
 [5] " $ hp  : num  110 110 93 110 175 105 245 62 95 123 ..."           
 [6] " $ drat: num  3.9 3.9 3.85 3.08 3.15 2.76 3.21 3.69 3.92 3.92 ..."
 [7] " $ wt  : num  2.62 2.88 2.32 3.21 3.44 ..."                       
 [8] " $ qsec: num  16.5 17 18.6 19.4 17 ..."                           
 [9] " $ vs  : num  0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 ..."                            
[10] " $ am  : num  1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ..."                            
[11] " $ gear: num  4 4 4 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 ..."                            
[12] " $ carb: num  4 4 1 1 2 1 4 2 2 4 ..."