I have a table in a Rmd file to print to pdf in which I need to add a dagger symbol into a column header. The basic test code is:

---
title: "Untitled"
author: "L. G. Hunsicker"
date: "4/29/2022"
output: pdf_document
---

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = F)
library(magrittr)
library(knitr)
library(kableExtra)
```

```{r test}
df <- data.frame(x = 1:10)
names(df)[1] <- 'maxCpep (ng/mL) &#x2020;' 
df %>% kbl()

```

I have tried several ways to get the dagger symbol to print, but with each effort, the outcome is that the code for the dagger symbol is simply printed as text or raises an error (with the backslash). I have tried using bquote, \dagger, \dagger, etc. I also tried to use a superscript "a" as an alternative. Again, kbl just prints the literal code text without substituting the required symbol. There must be a straight-forward way to insert special characters or math strings into a kable header, but I have been unable to find it.
Thanks in advance for any help with this issue. Larry Hunsicker

CodePudding user response：

You can directly add a Unicode escape:

df <- data.frame(x = 1:10)
names(df)[1] <- 'maxCpep (ng/mL) \u2020' 
df %>% kbl()

CodePudding user response：

Use intToUtf8 to get the special character.

names(df)[1] <- paste('maxCpep (ng/mL)', intToUtf8(8224))