Is there a way to output text to the R console in color

Question

I am writing a script and I want to output text messages to the console with different colors depending on conditions. For example: RED for errors and BLUE for warnings, etc.

I am using RStudio.

I'm not sure about RStudio, but this is possible in the RJava client of Eclipse StatET. — Andrie, May 29 '12 at 16:11
It might be best to post this to the RStudio forums. (My guess is that it's not possible without serious hacking.) — Ben Bolker, May 29 '12 at 16:37
I'm addicted to library(colorout). But it doesn't work with RStudio :-( — GSee, May 29 '12 at 16:47
Thanks for your help. I am asking in the R Studio forums now. I tried with some of the packages mentioned without success. — notuo, May 29 '12 at 17:00
seems its on the way? https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/issues/2574 — user63230, Oct 10 '19 at 11:40
There's a solution to this using base R [here](https://stackoverflow.com/a/57031762/4549096). — NotReallyHere12, May 19 '20 at 22:22

score 59 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 14 '18 at 19:15

59

Check out the new crayon package:

library(crayon)
cat(blue("Hello", "world!\n"))

More info on the GitHub page.

Works in RStudio 1.2.360+

edited Apr 14 '18 at 19:15

adilapapaya

4,765
3
25
26

answered Apr 21 '15 at 18:23

krlmlr

25,056
14
120
217

I have already searched it, and also found in SO questions, but it don't work. it just print the string without color specified in R console. – itfeature.com Apr 25 '15 at 04:46
@itfeature.com: Which particular R console are you using? – krlmlr Apr 25 '15 at 08:53
It didn't work for me and I'm using R Studio Version 0.99.892 – © 2009-2016 RStudio, Inc. – Jazzmine Apr 06 '16 at 14:36
@Jazzmine: Color support on the console is yet to be added to RStudio. See e.g. https://github.com/hadley/tibble/issues/30. – krlmlr Apr 06 '16 at 19:08
I've installed the crayon package from Github repository but in my case `cat(blue("Hello", "world!\n"))` still returns black text color :( – Florent Apr 08 '16 at 07:55
@Florent: In the terminal, or in RStudio? – krlmlr Apr 08 '16 at 08:55
@krlmlr It is in RStudio – Florent Apr 08 '16 at 11:48
@Florent, the crayon package contains a has_color() function that I noticed was basically always returning false on Windows. However, I downloaded the ConEmu terminal emulator and it does work there. I haven't played around with ComEmu's features but it looks like a nice emulator that, unlike Cygwin, easily runs R. – Ben Ogorek Apr 22 '17 at 15:26
Works fine for me (Linux Mint 18.2, R 3.4.3, Crayon 1.3.4, RStudio 1.2.360). – CoderGuy123 Mar 05 '18 at 15:54
4

It works for me as well, Windows 10, R-3.4.4, RStudio 1.1.383 – mjs May 01 '19 at 08:54
It works for me Windows 10, R 3.6.1, RStudio 1.2.1335. It did not work until after I upgraded R above 3.3.1. – Scott Aug 21 '19 at 03:05
This works on xfce4-terminal on ArchLinux and on Jupyter Notebook too. – Maxie Berkmann Nov 23 '19 at 21:37
Works for me using R 4.0.4 and R-studio 1.4.1106, in 20220110. – Erik Myrstener Jan 10 '22 at 13:37

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 29 '12 at 16:22

3

The xterm256 package by Romain Francoise allows this sort of thing in general on any console that understands xterm256 interrupts.

answered May 29 '12 at 16:22

Gavin Simpson

170,508
25
396
453

This looks promising but doesn't work in R Studio. Too bad for me. Thanks for the tip – notuo May 29 '12 at 16:59
is there any further update on this? Or we still do not have any R package that outputs coloured text on Rstudio console or alternatively on the plot or view pane of Rstudio. – Lazarus Thurston Sep 20 '17 at 14:28
4

Crayon works in RStudio now for me (Linux Mint 18.2, R 3.4.3, Crayon 1.3.4, RStudio 1.2.360). – CoderGuy123 Mar 05 '18 at 15:53

Pedro_S · Answer 3 · 2023-06-08T13:53:56.590

2

Actually, there IS a way without using R packages (Crayon and cli):

Use cat, paste0 and some ANSI hell to do it:

txt<-"rainbow"
for(col in 29:47){ cat(paste0("\033[0;", col, "m",txt,"\033[0m","\n"))}

You will need to do a bigger function, since cat is not very flexible, but this works well.

Obs: This solution was observed by a colleague, which is a perl stan.

edited Jun 08 '23 at 13:53

answered Jun 08 '23 at 13:50

Pedro_S

21
2

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 29 '20 at 17:03

1

On either Linux or Mac, you could try https://github.com/jalvesaq/colorout It doesn't work on Windows.

answered Nov 29 '20 at 17:03

Aquino

136
4

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 26 '23 at 12:24

Another option could be using the insight package with the print_color function. You could also make the text bold or italic. Here is some reproducible code:

library(insight)
print_color("ERROR", "red")
print_color("WARNINGS", "blue")

Output RStudio:

Is there a way to output text to the R console in color

5 Answers5

Linked