R: Reduce sessionInfo output - r

Question

sessionInfo() prints the below:
R version 3.4.3 (2017-11-30)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows >= 8 x64 (build 9200)
Matrix products: default
locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United Kingdom.1252 LC_CTYPE=English_United Kingdom.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United Kingdom.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_United Kingdom.1252
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
other attached packages:
[1] ggmap_2.7.900 gdtools_0.1.7 bindrcpp_0.2 crosstalk_1.0.0
[5] leaflet_1.1.0 networkD3_0.4 d3heatmap_0.6.1.2 dygraphs_1.1.1.4
[9] ggiraph_0.4.2 plotly_4.7.1 ggplot2_2.2.1.9000 highcharter_0.5.0
[13] formattable_0.2.0.1 DT_0.4 kableExtra_0.7.0 stringr_1.3.0
[17] tidyr_0.8.0 dplyr_0.7.4 markdown_0.8 bookdown_0.7
[21] rmarkdown_1.9 knitr_1.20
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] nlme_3.1-131.1 bitops_1.0-6 xts_0.10-2 devtools_1.13.5
[5] lubridate_1.7.3 RColorBrewer_1.1-2 httr_1.3.1 rprojroot_1.3-2
[9] tools_3.4.3 backports_1.1.2 R6_2.2.2 lazyeval_0.2.1
[13] colorspace_1.3-2 sp_1.2-7 withr_2.1.2 mnormt_1.5-5
[17] git2r_0.21.0 curl_3.1 compiler_3.4.3 rvest_0.3.2
[21] xml2_1.2.0 officer_0.2.2 labeling_0.3 scales_0.5.0.9000
[25] psych_1.7.8 readr_1.1.1 digest_0.6.15 foreign_0.8-69
[29] R.utils_2.6.0 jpeg_0.1-8 base64enc_0.1-3 pkgconfig_2.0.1
[33] htmltools_0.3.6 maps_3.2.0 highr_0.6 rvg_0.1.8
[37] htmlwidgets_1.0 rlang_0.2.0.9001 TTR_0.23-3 quantmod_0.4-12
[41] xaringan_0.6 shiny_1.0.5 bindr_0.1.1 zoo_1.8-1
[45] jsonlite_1.5 zip_1.0.0 R.oo_1.21.0 magrittr_1.5
[49] rlist_0.4.6.1 geosphere_1.5-7 Rcpp_0.12.16 munsell_0.4.3
[53] proto_1.0.0 R.methodsS3_1.7.1 stringi_1.1.7 yaml_2.1.18
[57] plyr_1.8.4 grid_3.4.3 parallel_3.4.3 lattice_0.20-35
[61] mapproj_1.2-5 hms_0.4.2 pillar_1.2.1 igraph_1.2.1
[65] uuid_0.1-2 rjson_0.2.15 reshape2_1.4.3 glue_1.2.0
[69] evaluate_0.10.1 data.table_1.10.4-3 png_0.1-7 httpuv_1.3.6.2
[73] RgoogleMaps_1.4.1 gtable_0.2.0 purrr_0.2.4 assertthat_0.2.0
[77] xfun_0.1 mime_0.5 xtable_1.8-2 broom_0.4.3
[81] viridisLite_0.3.0 tibble_1.4.2 memoise_1.1.0
This is too much information. How can I skip the last category (loaded via a namespace (and not attached):) ?

Answer 1

You can remove an item from sessionInfo(), which is a list with a class attribute then use the relevant method to print the resulting object:
getS3method("print","sessionInfo")(sessionInfo()[-7])
R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows >= 8 x64 (build 9200)
Matrix products: default
locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=French_France.1252 LC_CTYPE=French_France.1252 LC_MONETARY=French_France.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=French_France.1252
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
other attached packages:
[1] data.table_1.10.4 tidytext_0.1.8 bindrcpp_0.2 dplyr_0.7.4 readr_1.1.1 tidyr_0.7.2
[7] tibble_1.3.4 ggplot2_2.2.1 tidyverse_1.1.1 purrr_0.2.4 grofit_1.1.1-1 swirl_2.4.3
[13] lobstr_0.0.0.9000 Rcpp_0.12.16 rlang_0.2.0
This also works with same output:
utils:::print.sessionInfo(sessionInfo()[-7]) # thanks #r2evans
or
`class<-`(sessionInfo()[-7],"sessionInfo")
To know which part to remove from output, check:
names(sessionInfo())
[1] "R.version" "platform" "locale" "running" "basePkgs" "otherPkgs" "loadedOnly" "matprod" "BLAS"
[10] "LAPACK"

Answer 2

If you read ?sessionInfo, you will see that it returns an object of "sessionInfo", which is really just a named list with a lot of "stuff". Unfortunately, the only argument (package=NULL) does not limit to what you want.
When you realize that it returns a classed list, then you can start looking for print.sessionInfo, R's mechanism for class-specific function. I looked for it and didn't find it, but if you look closer into its package, you'll see utils:::print.sessionInfo. It's source is actually quite readable (not long and obfuscated).
I suggest you copy that function, remove 4 of the last 5 lines, and use it. For instance:
mySIprint <- function(x, locale = TRUE, ...) {
mkLabel <- function(L, n) {
vers <- sapply(L[[n]], function(x) x[["Version"]])
pkg <- sapply(L[[n]], function(x) x[["Package"]])
paste(pkg, vers, sep = "_")
}
# ... don't forget this code that I'm snipping out for brevity
if (!is.null(x$otherPkgs)) {
cat("\nother attached packages:\n")
print(mkLabel(x, "otherPkgs"), quote = FALSE, ...)
}
#if (!is.null(x$loadedOnly)) {
# cat("\nloaded via a namespace (and not attached):\n")
# print(mkLabel(x, "loadedOnly"), quote = FALSE, ...)
#}
invisible(x)
}
mySIprint(sessionInfo())
# R version 3.4.3 (2017-11-30)
# Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
# Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 16299)
#
# Matrix products: default
#
# locale:
# [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252
# [2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252
# [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
# [4] LC_NUMERIC=C
# [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
#
# attached base packages:
# [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
#
# other attached packages:
# [1] ggplot2_2.2.1 microbenchmark_1.4-4 readr_1.1.1
# [4] bindrcpp_0.2 dplyr_0.7.4 tidyr_0.7.2
# [7] testthat_2.0.0 plumber_0.4.4 r2_0.6.0