Thank you for your help. It answers my question but I'm still unclear about something.
I understand that 
suppressWarnings() will suppress warnings 
suppressMessanges() will suppress *messages*

What other *messages* type are there and how to suppress all of them. 
For example, I want to quietly *install* a package:

> install.packages("pkgDepTools",repos="http://bioconductor.org",lib="~/.R/library-i686")

but I always get the following printed. How to suppress it ?

trying URL 'http://bioconductor.org/src/contrib/pkgDepTools_1.0.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 145394 bytes
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 141Kb

* Installing *source* package 'pkgDepTools' ...
** R
** inst
** preparing package for lazy loading
Loading required package: graph
Loading required package: RBGL
** help
 >>> Building/Updating help pages for package 'pkgDepTools'
     Formats: text html latex example
  basicInstallOrder                 text    html    latex
  cleanPkgField                     text    html    latex
  getDownloadSize                   text    html    latex
  getInstallOrder                   text    html    latex
  makeDepGraph                      text    html    latex   example
  makePkgUrl                        text    html    latex
  parseContentLength                text    html    latex
  pkgDepTools-package               text    html    latex
** building package indices ...
* DONE (pkgDepTools)

The downloaded packages are in
        /tmp/RtmpYl8LZA/downloaded_packages
Warning message:
cannot create HTML package index in: tools:::unix.packages.html(.Library)
>

Thank you again,
-Johan


----- Original Message ----
From: Prof Brian Ripley <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk>
To: johan Faux <johanfaux@yahoo.com>
Cc: r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 5:24:25 PM
Subject: Re: [R] silent loading of packages

It depends on the 'message'. In this case

> library(VGAM, warn.conflicts=FALSE)
> suppressMessages(library(VGAM))

both work.  (How did you manage to miss the first?)

In general, it depends on whether the 'message' is a message in the sense 
of message() or produced some other way.  sink() would work, but these are 
*messages*, so how did you use it?


On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, johan Faux wrote:

> I would like to turn off all the messages during
> library(aPackage) or
> require(aPackage)
>
> I tried different commands: invisible, capture.output, sink but none of them is working.
>
> For example, loading VGAM, gives a lot of unnecessary messages:
>
>> library(VGAM)
>
> Attaching package: 'VGAM'
>
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:splines :
>
>         bs
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:splines :
>
>         ns
>
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:boot :
>
>         logit
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:boot :
>
>         simplex
>
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:stats :
>
>         glm
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:stats :
>
>         lm
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:stats :
>
>         poly
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:stats :
>
>         predict.glm
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:stats :
>
>         predict.lm
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:stats :
>
>         predict.mlm
>
>
>        The following object(s) are masked from package:base :
>
>         scale.default
>
>
>
> Any hint/help will be appreciated.
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595







 
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