print unique values of a column next to a string sentence [using paste()]

April 19, 2023

example code:

df <- data.frame(datetime = c("2023-04-17 13:20", "2023-04-19 16:13", "2023-04-19 16:46", "2023-04-18 09:23"))

print(paste("The following dates are present in the datetime column: ", 
              unique(df$datetime), sep = ""))

output I get:

[1] "The following dates are present in the datetime column: 2023-04-17 13:20"
[2] "The following dates are present in the datetime column: 2023-04-19 16:13"
[3] "The following dates are present in the datetime column: 2023-04-19 16:46"
[4] "The following dates are present in the datetime column: 2023-04-18 09:23"

Output I desire:

"The following dates are present in the datetime column: 2023-04-17 13:20, 2023-04-19 16:13, 2023-04-19 16:46, 2023-04-18 09:23"

I tried to create a vector of c(unique(df$datetime)), but that did not help either. Does anyone know a nice way of solving this?

>Solution :

you can "double" paste:

print(paste("The following dates are present in the datetime column: ", 
            paste(unique(df$datetime),collapse=", "), sep = ""))

[1] "The following dates are present in the datetime column: 2023-04-17 13:20, 2023-04-19 16:13, 2023-04-19 16:46, 2023-04-18 09:23"