# function SHORT.  
# last mod: 22 June 08
#to display part of a vector
#or some subset of a matrix -- R coerces tensor into vector for you.
#
# things to do:  as at work, add a 'skip' value to display data
# offset from ends.  Now, there's window() which, if called as
# window(as.vector(x)) may be useful -OTOH it returns a timeseries
# which is not really what I want
short <- function(x=seq(1,20),numel=4,ynamey=deparse(substitute(x))) {
ynam<-as.character(ynamey)
#clean up spaces
ynam<-gsub(" ","",ynam)
# I can't recall what I was worried about.  ynam is just fine
#if(length(ynam)>1) #some idiot entered a value
#{
#	stop("Usage:short(name [,number_of_elements_to_show]) \n")
#}
if(2*numel >= length(x)) {
	print(x)
	}
	else {	
		cat(paste(ynam,'[1] thru ',ynam,'[',numel,']\n',sep=""))
		print(x[1:numel])
		cat(' ... \n')
#need to print values of length(x)-number+1 or some such
		cat(paste(ynam,'[',length(x)-numel+1,'] thru ', ynam, '[', length(x),']\n',sep=""))
		print(x[(length(x)-numel+1):length(x)])
		}
}