Catching the print of the function - r

Question

I am using package fda in particular function fRegress. This function includes another function that is called eigchk and checks if coeffients matrix is singular.
Here is the function as the package owners (J. O. Ramsay, Giles Hooker, and Spencer Graves) wrote it.
eigchk <- function(Cmat) {
# check Cmat for singularity
eigval <- eigen(Cmat)$values
ncoef <- length(eigval)
if (eigval[ncoef] < 0) {
neig <- min(length(eigval),10)
cat("\nSmallest eigenvalues:\n")
print(eigval[(ncoef-neig+1):ncoef])
cat("\nLargest eigenvalues:\n")
print(eigval[1:neig])
stop("Negative eigenvalue of coefficient matrix.")
}
if (eigval[ncoef] == 0) stop("Zero eigenvalue of coefficient matrix.")
logcondition <- log10(eigval[1]) - log10(eigval[ncoef])
if (logcondition > 12) {
warning("Near singularity in coefficient matrix.")
cat(paste("\nLog10 Eigenvalues range from\n",
log10(eigval[ncoef])," to ",log10(eigval[1]),"\n"))
}
}
As you can see last if condition checks if logcondition is bigger than 12 and prints then the ranges of eigenvalues.
The following code implements the useage of regularization with roughness pennalty. The code is taken from the book "Functional data analysis with R and Matlab".
annualprec = log10(apply(daily$precav,2,sum))
tempbasis =create.fourier.basis(c(0,365),65)
tempSmooth=smooth.basis(day.5,daily$tempav,tempbasis)
tempfd =tempSmooth$fd
templist = vector("list",2)
templist[[1]] = rep(1,35)
templist[[2]] = tempfd
conbasis = create.constant.basis(c(0,365))
betalist = vector("list",2)
betalist[[1]] = conbasis
SSE = sum((annualprec - mean(annualprec))^2)
Lcoef = c(0,(2*pi/365)^2,0)
harmaccelLfd = vec2Lfd(Lcoef, c(0,365))
betabasis = create.fourier.basis(c(0, 365), 35)
lambda = 10^12.5
betafdPar = fdPar(betabasis, harmaccelLfd, lambda)
betalist[[2]] = betafdPar
annPrecTemp = fRegress(annualprec, templist, betalist)
betaestlist2 = annPrecTemp$betaestlist
annualprechat2 = annPrecTemp$yhatfdobj
SSE1.2 = sum((annualprec-annualprechat2)^2)
RSQ2 = (SSE - SSE1.2)/SSE
Fratio2 = ((SSE-SSE1.2)/3.7)/(SSE1/30.3)
resid = annualprec - annualprechat2
SigmaE. = sum(resid^2)/(35-annPrecTemp$df)
SigmaE = SigmaE.*diag(rep(1,35))
y2cMap = tempSmooth$y2cMap
stderrList = fRegress.stderr(annPrecTemp, y2cMap, SigmaE)
betafdPar = betaestlist2[[2]]
betafd = betafdPar$fd
betastderrList = stderrList$betastderrlist
betastderrfd = betastderrList[[2]]
As penalty factor the authors use certain lambda.
The following code implements the search for the appropriate `lambda.
loglam = seq(5,15,0.5)
nlam = length(loglam)
SSE.CV = matrix(0,nlam,1)
for (ilam in 1:nlam) {
lambda = 10ˆloglam[ilam]
betalisti = betalist
betafdPar2 = betalisti[[2]]
betafdPar2$lambda = lambda
betalisti[[2]] = betafdPar2
fRegi = fRegress.CV(annualprec, templist,
betalisti)
SSE.CV[ilam] = fRegi$SSE.CV
}
By changing the value of the loglam and cross validation I suppose to equaire the best lambda, yet if the length of the loglam is to big or its values lead the coefficient matrix to singulrity. I recieve the following message:
Log10 Eigenvalues range from
-5.44495317739048 to 6.78194912518214
Created by the function eigchk as I already have mentioned above.
Now my question is, are there any way to catch this so called warning? By catch I mean some function or method that warns me when this has happened and I could adjust the values of the loglam. Since there is no actual warning definition in the function beside this print of the message I ran out of ideas.
Thank you all a lot for your suggestions.

Answer 1

By "catch the warning", if you mean, will alert you that there is a potential problem with loglam, then you might want to look at try and tryCatch functions. Then you can define the behavior you want implemented if any warning condition is satisfied.
If you just want to store the output of the warning (which might be assumed from the question title, but may not be what you want), then try looking into capture.output.