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

[Liaw, Andy]

From: 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.

Thanks!  This looks like a good alternative.  What do others think of this
approach?

Andy

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