How to prevent output of Entity object in EntityValue?

Question

By default, no matter

ElementData["Hydrogen", "DiscoveryCountries"]

or

EntityValue[Entity["Element", "Hydrogen"], "DiscoveryCountries"]

gives

However, preparing and rendering Entity object is quite slow as said in Speed of curated data calls in Version 10, a solution we can use is

SetSystemOptions[SystemOptions["DataOptions"] /. True -> False]

which results

{"DataOptions" -> {"ReturnEntities" -> False, "ReturnQuantities" -> False, 
"UseDataWrappers" -> False}}

to prevent output of entity object.

However, I found this only works for *Data function, not working for EntityValue query.

SetSystemOptions[SystemOptions["DataOptions"] /. True -> False]
ElementData["Hydrogen", "DiscoveryCountries"]
EntityValue[Entity["Element", "Hydrogen"], "DiscoveryCountries"]

gives

How to prevent output of Entity object of EntityValue? And combine with my previous post, it seems that EntityValue and *Data are unexpectedly inconsistent.

Answer 1

You can use $PrePrint and Replace with either ToString or CanonicalName.

Before setting $PrePrint

SessionTime[];
ConstantArray[Entity["Country", "Bermuda"], 10000]
SessionTime[] - Out[-2]

takes 1.0735404 seconds to render the 10,000 entity objects.

I use Interpretation to ensure the reformatted entities can still used. Pane provides formatting and spacing when reformatted entities are used in input.

With ToString

$PrePrint =
 Replace[#
   , e_Entity :> 
    Interpretation[Pane[ToString[e], ContentPadding -> False], e]
   , Infinity
   ] & ;

Now

SessionTime[];
ConstantArray[Entity["Country", "Canada"], 10000]
SessionTime[] - Out[-2]

takes 0.1586101 seconds to render the 10,000 reformatted entity objects.

These objects can still be used as entities and even copied and pasted as input.

With CanonicalName it is slightly faster that ToString.

$PrePrint =
  Replace[#
    , e_Entity :> 
     Interpretation[Pane[CanonicalName[e], ContentPadding -> False], e]
    , Infinity
    ] &;

then

SessionTime[];
ConstantArray[Entity["Country", "Nigeria"], 10000]
SessionTime[] - Out[-2]

takes 0.1426487 seconds to render the 10,000 reformatted entity objects.

Still can be used for input

$PrePrint can be cleared with

$PrePrint =.

Hope this helps.