Generating custom log messages in R
Published on 24th April 2023 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutesWhile I have been exploring the use of R on a private basis during the last few years, a recent opportunity allowed me to use this exposure at work. This took the form of creating a utility script for use by others. To keep things lightweight, I did not go down the packaging route, but that may come later, possibly for something else.
However, anything used by others needs input checking and comprehensible feedback should anything go wrong. For me, that meant looking at the message, warning and stop functions. The last of these aborts script execution when there is a critical error, something that the other two do not do. The message function is for informative user input, while the warning function suggests things that may need their attention.
Each function takes string input and sends this to the terminal or log. They also can combine different pieces of text in the style of the paste0 function, and can take the text output of other functions as input. Used in combination with conditional logic or error handling, they can help a user track down what went wrong without their needing to ask a script developer. Anything that helps anyone else to help themselves has to be good.