[Rd] Wishlist: 'quietly' argument for .onAttach() / .First.lib()

[Bill Dunlap]

On Thu, 13 Apr 2006, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Apr 2006, Peter Ruckdeschel wrote:
>
> > Hi R-devels,
> >
> > in "Writing R extensions" as well as in the help
> > to .onAttach(), you mention that one could
> > use this function to issue a start-up message/banner
> > for the package.
> >
> > My little wish for Easter:
> >
> > a 'quietly'-type argument for .onAttach() / .First.lib()
> > which is passed through by functions
> > require() and library() respectively,
> > and by means of which one could optionally
> > suppress this start-up message/banner .
> >
> > Is this hard to do?
>
> I believe so (and think we have been here before).  The documented call
> sequence is
>
>       .onLoad(libname, pkgname)
>       .onAttach(libname, pkgname)
>
> the same as .First.lib.  There is no way to add an argument here, as many
> existing packages do not support it.  Beyond that, how would you pass the
> argument in?  Namespaces and packages are often loaded/attached implicitly
> as a result of loading other packages.
>
> I did think you could make use of an option to decide whether to the print
> the message or not, but I have always assumed that those who did want a
> banner probably did not want it suppressed.

If the .onAttach() used message() instead of cat()
to display the banner message then you could use
	suppressMessages(require("randomForest"))
to squelch the message.

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Bill Dunlap
Insightful Corporation
bill at insightful dot com
360-428-8146

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