A Stata-like codebook function that quickly gives an overview of a variable

[anhqle]

codebook is a Stata function that gives a quick overview of a variable (its name, missingness, range, value, labels). (See image). Stata users frequently ask for this function when they switch to R.

Happy to contribute PR if you think it's a good idea.

[krlmlr]

Codebooks are nice, but I'm not sure this is a good fit for the tibble package. Have you seen memisc::codebook()?

[anhqle]

Yes I have. I'd like to see the codebook functionality in tibble (or any other "hadleyverse" package that fits) because I think it's a good idea to centralize all the common data management tasks under the same roof.

For example, arguably data import or different NA values have been done long before haven and tibble. Yet it's a lot better to have all of them in a few packages developed by the same team (the team around dplyr and tibble.) I know the performance will be top-notch, development will be active, and that the packages API will work well together.

Case in point: memisc does not yet manage to import Stata 13 files, not to mention Stata 14. The way it handles variable and value labels requires various manual hacks before I can transition into dplyr data munging.

I think you guys have done a great job finetuning the data import and management process with haven, dplyr, etc. A codebook would be one of the final missing pieces.

[anhqle]

@krlmlr If you have a minute could you take a look at PR #129 that implements Stata-like codebook? There's an output unit test that you can see right away. I'll work on completing this feature if this is something you guys want. If not, please let me know anyway.

[hadley]

This really doesn't feel quite right for tibble. I'm not sure where it should go yet, but tibble doesn't seem right.

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