Use of `focus` argument in `print()` produces an error

[Jacob Scott]

This is the case since {pillar} 1.8.0, which expects a pillar_focus attribute rather than a focus argument.

library(tibble)

df <- tibble(x = 1, y = 2)
print(df, focus = "x")
#> Error in tbl_format_setup(x, width = width, ..., n = n, max_extra_cols = max_extra_cols, : formal argument "focus" matched by multiple actual arguments

attr(df, "pillar_focus") <- "y"
print(df)
#> # A tibble:      1 x 2
#> # Focus columns: y
#>       x     y
#>   <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1     1     2

^{Created on 2022-08-23 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

[Jacob Scott]

Pillar issue #585 created for the same problem.

[Kirill Müller]

Thanks, good catch.

I'm not sure if we want to support a focus argument to print() . Can you please share a use case?

[Jacob Scott]

Previously I had been defining my own tbl subclass which automatically focussed on certain columns when printing. Obviously the piller_focus attribute is much nicer as I can now ditch my subclass and simply set the attribute. I just posted the issue as my code had suddenly stopped working and it took a few minutes of head-scratching to work out why.

Really, I think this isn't an issue with {tibble} but with {pillar}. The docs for tibble:::print.tbl_df() point to pillar::tbl_format_setup() for the dots argument, and this function still mentions the defunct focus argument. Soft-deprecating focus, improving the docs, improving the error message or any combination in {pillar} would hit the spot as far as I'm concerned :)

[Kirill Müller]

Thanks, let's handle this in pillar.

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