R return error using system()

Question

I am trying to find out how to capture the error message from system()

EX:

> res <- system("ls home",intern=TRUE)
ls: cannot access home: No such file or directory
Warning message:
running command 'ls home' had status 2 
> res
character(0)
attr(,"status")
[1] 2

Is there a way to capture the "ls: cannot access home: No such file or directory" in res?

DAXaholic · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-23 17:51:21Z

3

Try it like that, i.e. redirecting the stderr data

res <- system("ls home 2>&1",intern=TRUE)

which will result in

[1] "ls: home: No such file or directory"
attr(,"status")
[1] 1

answered Sep 23, 2016 at 17:51

DAXaholic

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3 Comments

DAXaholic Over a year ago

Nice to hear that

user295944 Over a year ago

This works for this command but what I am trying to really to is use res <- system("impala-shell -i....",intern=TRUE) and when there is a query error, capture the error. Adding 2>&1 doesn't seem to do it here

Garini Over a year ago

This method is not working for other errors like if the command does not exist. Any other workaround?

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