Feature: update $TABLE with a certain format

[kylebaron]

Summary

By default, NONMEM only includes 5 digits for numbers written to .tab output. This is usually ok for floating point numbers, we might want more and we need more when you have integer data with more than 5 digits (like record number data in a data set with > 99,999 records.

Can we include a feature when we have a user friendly way to update $TABLE for 6 or more digits? I'd suggest letting users pass a FORMAT statement through to the control stream, but the syntax is difficult to remember (FORMAT=s1PE12.5).

[seth127]

Yes, we can definitely make this modification, and it shouldn't be too hard with nmrec.

My question is how we would present this to the user. Below are a few options off the top of my head. (Any of these would be controlled by an T/F argument, probably defaulting to TRUE.)

1. An argument in copy_model_from() (and maybe new_model()) that automatically adds this to the new control stream. --> This feels a little aggressive to me, but if we really think it should be in there, it's probably the easiest
2. A helper that adds this and could be piped from copy_model_from() or new_model(), similar to the tweak_initial_estimates() examples
3. Part of a check_model_file() sort of helper, that a user would run before submitting. I'm envisioning this could also do things like check for the NUM column that nm_join() expects, and probably a few other conventions. This could also have a mode to warn/error or a mode to actually make the fix and message.