Printing newlines with print() in R

An alternative to cat() is writeLines():

> writeLines("File not supplied.\nUsage: ./program F=filename")
File not supplied.
Usage: ./program F=filename
>

An advantage is that you don't have to remember to append a "\n" to the string passed to cat() to get a newline after your message. E.g. compare the above to the same cat() output:

> cat("File not supplied.\nUsage: ./program F=filename")
File not supplied.
Usage: ./program F=filename>

and

> cat("File not supplied.\nUsage: ./program F=filename","\n")
File not supplied.
Usage: ./program F=filename
>

The reason print() doesn't do what you want is that print() shows you a version of the object from the R level - in this case it is a character string. You need to use other functions like cat() and writeLines() to display the string. I say "a version" because precision may be reduced in printed numerics, and the printed object may be augmented with extra information, for example.

Using writeLines also allows you to dispense with the "\n" newline character, by using c(). As in:

writeLines(c("File not supplied.","Usage: ./program F=filename",[additional text for third line]))

This is helpful if you plan on writing a multiline message with combined fixed and variable input, such as the [additional text for third line] above.

You can do this:

cat("File not supplied.\nUsage: ./program F=filename\n")

Notice that cat has a return value of NULL.