posit-dev / posit-dev/positron

Variables View: For data frame columns, consider showing str representation rather than individual values

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#968 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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area: variables enhancement
Dominant language
TypeScript
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Forks
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Consider the bulldozer blue book data frame (details on downloading and reading it are here: https://github.com/rstudio/positron/issues/966)

The environment pane currently shows up to 100 individual values when you expand this column:

Screen Shot 2023-08-07 at 8 09 07 AM

However, there is a print method for the column that IMO provides a much more useful summary (R data frames also support this behavior):

Screen Shot 2023-08-07 at 8 06 43 AM

I think that in the Environment pane we should have the notion of data types that terminate in a textual summary (rather than just recursing into long displays of individual scalars)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing the Variables View and Environment pane entry points that expand data-frame columns. Review the bulldozer blue book example and issue #966 for the data shape and current behavior. Done means long columns show a useful textual summary instead of expanding into many individual scalar values, with the supported data types clearly defined.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
r, typescript
Domain
frontend
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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