Terminal-based-tools for viewing data, summarizing contents of objects and environments, deciphering unknown objects, and aid debugging complex functions. It was developed to facilitate working with R in combination with the brilliant text editor vim or over ssh connections without RStudio server, but it works fine within RStudio or other GUIs too.
The latest official release of the package is available on CRAN.
install.packages("dataview")
You typically also want to add these lines to the end of your ~/.Rprofile to auto-load the package and hide all objects created during the startup
require(dataview)
whos.exclude(ls())
and perhaps also
print.factor <- heat.view
dataview centers around the functions whos inspired by the same function in MATLAB,
entry.view inspired by data base systems,
and heat.view that can visualize long vectors in a very compact manner (especially factors).
More complex objects are however better studied with the browse function that combines the above functions in stepwise manner. Note that it also supports partial name matching and tab completion!
The color schemes used by dataview are defined in the xtermStyle package. To change the default palette (dark on light terminal background) you must attach it and do the following:
require(xtermStyle)
style.palette("light") # Designed for dark terminal background
style.palette also let's you define your own palette if you are not happy with the pre-defined ones.