Output of hints function from hints package in R

Question

The following code has been taken from document of hints package. Last line of this code is throwing error.

library(hints)
m <- lm(BOD)
hints(m)
library(xtable)
xtable(hints(m))

The error is

Error in UseMethod("xtable") : 
  no applicable method for 'xtable' applied to an object of class "hints"

I wonder how to get hints function output to use in knitr or sweave document with xtable function.

Answer 1

It looks like xtable.hints is provided by the package but isn't properly exported so you can't actually use it. It's a fairly simple function though and the easiest solution would probably be to just copy the source and make your own function that does the exact same thing.

xtable.hints <- function(x, align = "llll", ...){
    x <- as.data.frame(x$results[, c(2, 1, 3)])
    colnames(x) <- c("Package", "Function", "Task")
    xtable(x, align = align, ...)
}

x <- 1:10
y <- rnorm(10)
o <- lm(y~x)
xtable(hints(o)) # now it works