Transformers, glue!

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General description of transformers functionality in {glue} with some potentially useful examples.

Prologue

Package {glue} is designed as “small, fast, dependency free” tools to “glue strings to data in R”. To put simply, it provides concise and flexible alternatives for paste() with some additional features:

library(glue)

x <- 10
paste("I have", x, "apples.")
## [1] "I have 10 apples."
glue("I have {x} apples.")
## I have 10 apples.

Recently, fate lead me to try using {glue} in a package. I was very pleased to how it makes code more readable, which I believe is a very important during package development. However, I stumbled upon this pretty unexpected behavior:

y <- NULL
paste("I have", x, "apples and", y, "oranges.")
## [1] "I have 10 apples and  oranges."
str(glue("I have {x} apples and {y} oranges."))
## Classes 'glue', 'character'  chr(0)

If one of the expressions is evaluated into NULL then the output becomes empty string. This was unintuitive result and for a while I thought about stop using {glue} because NULL is expected to be a valid input. However, if Jim Hester is package author, you should expect some sort of designed solution to any problem. This time wasn’t an exception: there is a transformers functionality.

Basically, transformer is a function that changes the output of R expressions the way you want. As I wanted to make NULL visible, this is a perfect way to do it.

Overview

This post describes an easy way to create {glue} wrappers with custom transformers. It also lists some examples that can be helpful in common tasks:

  • Transformers uses a little bit of functional programming magic to create a potentially useful transformers.

Setup is very simple this time:

# {glue} was loaded in examples
# For functional programming magic
library(purrr)
# For string manipulation in one of the examples
library(stringr)

Transformers

The task of creating wrapper for glue() essentially consists from two parts:

  • Evaluate properly a supplied R expressions.
  • Modify them to show intended behavior.

The transforming_glue() wrapper does exactly this:

transforming_glue <- function(transformer) {
  function(..., .sep = "", .envir = parent.frame(), .open = "{", .close = "}",
           .na = "NA") {
    glue(
      ..., .sep = .sep, .envir = .envir, .open = .open, .close = .close,
      .na = "NA",
      .transformer = compose(transformer, identity_transformer)
    )
  }
}

Breakdown of this code:

  • Input is a transformer - function that takes an already evaluated R object and modifies it the way you want.
  • Output is a function that is a wrapper for glue(). Its transformer is a function composition that first evaluates R expression with identity_transformer (function from {glue}) and then applies supplied transformer. Composition here is done with compose() - an element of functional programming magic from {purrr}.

Show NULL

Back to initial problem. We want NULL to be a valid R value for a glue():

show_null <- function(x, val = "NULL") {
  if (is.null(x)) {
    val
  } else {
    x
  }
}

glue_null <- transforming_glue(show_null)

# Example from Prologue
glue_null("I have {x} apples and {y} oranges.")
## I have 10 apples and NULL oranges.

Fixed width output

With {stringr} package you can force an output to be fixed width:

str_width <- function(x, width) {
  if (str_length(x) > width) {
    str_trunc(x, width, side = "right")
  } else {
    str_pad(x, width, side = "right")
  }
}

glue_width <- transforming_glue(partial(str_width, width = 10))

short_oh <- "Ooh!"
long_oh <- "Oooooooooooh!"
glue_width("This puzzles ({short_oh}) and surprises ({long_oh}) me.")
## This puzzles (Ooh!      ) and surprises (Ooooooo...) me.

Note usage of partial() here: it takes function along with its arguments’ values and modifies it by “pre-filling” those arguments.

Enclose output

In some situation you might want to explicitly show which strings represent R objects in the output. You can do that by enclosing the output in some sort of braces:

enclose <- function(x, start = "<", end = ">") {
  paste0(start, x, end)
}

glue_enclose <- transforming_glue(enclose)

glue_enclose("What if I had {x} oranges?")
## What if I had <10> oranges?

Bizarro encryption

One possibly useful pattern is to encrypt the used data to prevent it from seeing by untrustworthy eyes. Here we will use simplified bizarro() example from this insightful UseR 2018 talk by the amazing Jennifer (Jenny) Bryan. Here glue_bizarro() “reverts” R objects based on their type.

str_reverse <- function(x) {
  vapply(
    strsplit(x, ""),
    FUN = function(z) paste(rev(z), collapse = ""),
    FUN.VALUE = ""
  )
}

bizarro <- function(x) {
  cls <- class(x)[[1]]
  
  switch(
    cls,
    logical = !x,
    integer = -x,
    numeric = -x,
    character = str_reverse(x),
    x
  )
}

glue_bizarro <- transforming_glue(bizarro)

new_fruit <- "pomegranate"
glue_bizarro(
  "Then I might have {x + 10} apples. Is that {TRUE}?
   Maybe I want {new_fruit}?"
)
## Then I might have -20 apples. Is that FALSE?
## Maybe I want etanargemop?

Ultimate example

Using already familiar functional programming technique, we can create an ultimate glue() wrapper as a combination, or rather compose()-ition, of all previous examples. The most important part is supply them in correct order:

glue_ultimate <- transforming_glue(
  compose(
    enclose,
    partial(str_width, width = 10),
    # To ensure that input of `str_width()` is character
    as.character,
    show_null,
    bizarro
  )
)

glue_ultimate(
  "I have {x} apples and {y} oranges.
   This puzzles ({short_oh}) and surprises ({long_oh}) me.
   What if I had {x} oranges?
   Then I might have {x + 10} apples. Is that {TRUE}?
   Maybe I want {new_fruit}?"
)
## I have <-10       > apples and <NULL      > oranges.
## This puzzles (<!hoO      >) and surprises (<!hooooo...>) me.
## What if I had <-10       > oranges?
## Then I might have <-20       > apples. Is that <FALSE     >?
## Maybe I want <etanarg...>?

Conclusions

  • Package {glue} is a very useful and flexible way of creating strings based on evaluation of R expressions.
  • Its “transformer” functionality is an interesting way to manipulate string output by supplying custom modification function.
  • Functional programming with {purrr} can be very helpful in creating concise and extensible code.
sessionInfo()
sessionInfo()
## R version 3.4.4 (2018-03-15)
## Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
## Running under: Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS
## 
## Matrix products: default
## BLAS: /usr/lib/openblas-base/libblas.so.3
## LAPACK: /usr/lib/libopenblasp-r0.2.18.so
## 
## locale:
##  [1] LC_CTYPE=ru_UA.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
##  [3] LC_TIME=ru_UA.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=ru_UA.UTF-8    
##  [5] LC_MONETARY=ru_UA.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=ru_UA.UTF-8   
##  [7] LC_PAPER=ru_UA.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
##  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
## [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=ru_UA.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       
## 
## attached base packages:
## [1] methods   stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  base     
## 
## other attached packages:
## [1] stringr_1.3.1 purrr_0.2.5   glue_1.3.0   
## 
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
##  [1] Rcpp_0.12.18     bookdown_0.7     crayon_1.3.4     digest_0.6.15   
##  [5] rprojroot_1.3-2  backports_1.1.2  magrittr_1.5     evaluate_0.11   
##  [9] blogdown_0.8     rlang_0.2.1.9000 stringi_1.2.4    rmarkdown_1.10  
## [13] tools_3.4.4      xfun_0.3         yaml_2.2.0       compiler_3.4.4  
## [17] htmltools_0.3.6  knitr_1.20

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