In R, is it possible to call a function in a text paragraph and remove the breaks?

Question

I am trying to write a function for non R users for report writing in R markdown. The function calls unicode for macron characters.

CODE:

library(stringr)
library(Unicode)
library(htmltools)
library(cat)

mac <- function(x){
         if (x == "a") {
  result <- "\u101"
  } else if (x == "A") {
  result <- "\u100"
  } else if (x == "e") {
  result <- "\u113"
  } else if (x == "E") {
  result <- "\u112"
  } else if (x == "i") {
  result <- "\u12b"
  } else if (x == "I") {
  result <- "\u12a"
  } else if (x == "o") {
  result <- "\u14d"
  } else if (x == "O") {
  result <- "\u14c"
  } else if (x == "u") {
  result <- "\u16b"
  } else if (x == "U") {
  result <- "\u16a"
  } else (print("Entry not recognised")) 
  
  result = paste0(result, sep = "")

  return(result)
  # return(p(paste0(result, sep = "")))
  
}

I have tried:

  # gsub("[\r\n]", "", result)
  # str_replace_all(x, "[\r\n]" , "")

Without any success - I realise this is because there are no spaces around the output of the function to remove.

As an example, I want this:

p('Something',mac("a"),'nd something with a macron')

To read:

Something ānd something with a macron.

Answer 1

You're getting multiple lines because you're passing a list to p().

If you wrap the text in paste0 the output should all be on one line.

Input:

p(paste0('Something ',mac("a"),'nd something with a macron'))

Output:

<p>Something ānd something with a macron</p>

Which displays as:

Something ānd something with a macron

This can be wrapped in a single function:

p <- function(...) htmltools::p(paste0(...))

If you anticipate users trying to pass lists to p() then you could add something to handle those exceptions.

Full code with example use:

library(stringr)
library(Unicode)
library(htmltools)
library(cat)

mac <- function(x){
    if (x == "a") {
        result <- "\u101"
    } else if (x == "A") {
        result <- "\u100"
    } else if (x == "e") {
        result <- "\u113"
    } else if (x == "E") {
        result <- "\u112"
    } else if (x == "i") {
        result <- "\u12b"
    } else if (x == "I") {
        result <- "\u12a"
    } else if (x == "o") {
        result <- "\u14d"
    } else if (x == "O") {
        result <- "\u14c"
    } else if (x == "u") {
        result <- "\u16b"
    } else if (x == "U") {
        result <- "\u16a"
    } else (print("Entry not recognised")) 
    
    result = paste0(result, sep = "")
    
    return(result)
    # return(p(paste0(result, sep = "")))
    
}

# wrap input in paste0() to create a string then pass to p()
p <- function(...) htmltools::p(paste0(...))

# example use
p('Something ',mac("a"),'nd something with a macron')