[R] Suppressing output (e.g. from cat)

[hadley wickham]

>> Or:
>>
>> tc <- textConnection(NULL, "w")
>> sink(tc)
>> ...
>> sink()
>> close(tc)
>
> That is a lot more expensive and subject to
>
>    o   Use of textConnection(NULL, mode="w") could segfault.
>
> (NEWS for 2.7.1).  Output textConnections are convenient, but have quite a
> lot of overhead since they need to keep the character vector current.

That's true and I hadn't considered the speed issue.  It would be nice
to have an analogue to capture.output though.  Maybe:

quiet <- function(x) {
  sink(tempfile())
  on.exit(sink())
  invisible(force(x))
}

?

Hadley


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