new print() formatting breaks first/last default behavior

[ethanbsmith]

Description

feature #321 has changed the behavior of head() and tail() for n >= 42. instead of printing exactly n rows, it truncates the output to just a few of the first and last rows, with an ... in between. This also happens with first() and last().

i suspect this affects other output scenarios where explicit subsetting produced more than 42 rows, though not sure how common that use case is.

Expected behavior

first and last should print exactly n rows

Minimal, reproducible example

tail(as.xts(sample_matrix), 45)

Session Info

quantmod_0.4.20.2  TTR_0.24.3.1       xts_0.12.9900      zoo_1.8-11

[joshuaulrich]

Actually, I don't think this is a bug or unintended behavior. Those functions still work as intended. The "problem" is that the results are auto-printed, which calls print.xts() automatically. And 40 is the default number of rows to truncate. There's no easy way for print.xts() to know what call immediately preceded it.

The solution will be to set the yet-to-be-named option to a value you prefer. I chose 40 because that's roughly what fits on my laptop screen. data.table uses 100. I'm open to suggestions for the default vaule.

[ethanbsmith]

didnt mean to imply it broke these functions directly. just that the effective behavior was different

• anecdotal, but ive never run into this w/ data.table. confirmed it has the same issue w/ tail(x, 101)
• 1080p can show around 55 rows of autput w/ default fonts/size

anything between 55-100 for default would be my suggestion.

---

From: Joshua Ulrich @.> Sent: Monday, January 30, 2023 2:31 PM To: joshuaulrich/xts @.> Cc: Ethan Smith @.>; Author @.> Subject: Re: [joshuaulrich/xts] new print() formatting breaks first/last default behavior (Issue #388)

Actually, I don't think this is a bug or unintended behavior. Those functions still work as intended. The "problem" is that the results are auto-printed, which calls print.xts() automatically. And 40 is the default number of rows to truncate. There's no easy way for print.xts() to know what call immediately preceded it.

The solution will be to set the yet-to-be-named option to a value you prefer. I chose 40 because that's roughly what fits on my laptop screen. data.table uses 100. I'm open to suggestions for the default vaule.

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[joshuaulrich]

I bumped the default to 100 and added a global option to control it (in 701f4de28a1ed8165bb7ac89e81a2235fcb49737).