Increase the intensity or suppress the output of an observed message

Function provides more nuanced management of known message outputs messages that appear in function calls outside the front-end users control (e.g., functions written in third-party packages). Specifically, this function provides a less nuclear approach than quiet and friends, which suppresses all cat and messages raised, and instead allows for specific messages to be raised either to warnings or, even more extremely, to errors. Note that for messages that are not suppressed the order with which the output and message calls appear in the original function is not retained.

Usage

manageMessages(
  expr,
  allow = NULL,
  message2warning = NULL,
  message2error = NULL,
  ...
)

Arguments

expr: expression to be evaluated (e.g., ret <- myfun(args)). Function should either be used as a wrapper, such as manageMassages(ret <- myfun(args), ...) or ret <- manageMassages(myfun(args), ...), or more readably as a pipe, ret <- myfun(args) |> manageMassages(...)
allow: (optional) a character vector indicating messages that should still appear, while all other messages should remain suppressed. Each supplied message is matched using a grepl expression, so partial matching is supported (though more specific messages are less likely to throw false positives). If NULL, all messages will be suppressed unless they appear in message2error or message2warning
message2warning: (optional) Input can be a character vector containing messages that should probably be considered warning messages for the current application instead. Each supplied character vector element is matched using a grepl expression, so partial matching is supported (though more specific messages are less likely to throw false positives).
message2error: (optional) Input can be a character vector containing known-to-be-severe messages that should be converted to errors for the current application. See message2warning for details.
...: additional arguments passed to grepl

Value

returns the original result of eval(expr), with warning messages either left the same, increased to errors, or suppressed (depending on the input specifications)

References

Chalmers, R. P., & Adkins, M. C. (2020). Writing Effective and Reliable Monte Carlo Simulations with the SimDesign Package. The Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 16(4), 248-280. doi:10.20982/tqmp.16.4.p248

Author

Phil Chalmers rphilip.chalmers@gmail.com

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{

myfun <- function(x, warn=FALSE){
   message('This function is rather chatty')
   cat("It even prints in different output forms!\n")
   message('And even at different ')
   cat(" many times!\n")
   cat("Too many messages can be annoying \n")
   if(warn)
     warning('It may even throw warnings ')
   x
}

out <- myfun(1)
out

# tell the function to shhhh
out <- quiet(myfun(1))
out

# same default behaviour as quiet(), but potential for nuance
out2 <- manageMessages(myfun(1))
identical(out, out2)

# allow some messages to still get printed
out2 <- manageMessages(myfun(1), allow = "many times!")
out2 <- manageMessages(myfun(1), allow = "This function is rather chatty")

# note: . matches single character (regex)
out2 <- manageMessages(myfun(1), allow = c("many times.",
                                           "This function is rather chatty"))

# convert specific message to warning
out3 <- manageMessages(myfun(1), message2warning = "many times!")
identical(out, out3)

# other warnings also get through
out3 <- manageMessages(myfun(1, warn=TRUE), message2warning = "times!")
identical(out, out3)

# convert message to error
manageMessages(myfun(1), message2error = "m... times!")

# multiple message intensity changes
manageMessages(myfun(1),
  message2warning = "It even prints in different output forms",
  message2error = "many times!")

manageMessages(myfun(1),
  allow = c("This function is rather chatty",
            "Too many messages can be annoying"),
  message2warning = "It even prints in different output forms",
  message2error = "many times!")

} # }