Stop lapply from printing to console

Use l_ply from plyr:

library(plyr)
FUN <- function(x) {
    FUN2 <- function(z) message(z)
    l_ply(1:3, function(i) FUN2(paste(x, i)))
}
FUN("hello")

Use invisible, eg:

invisible(FUN("hello"))
hello 1
hello 2
hello 3

You can wrap it around the lapply call in the function too to make it tidier.

You could use a plain ol' for loop instead of lapply():

FUN <- function(x) {
  for (i in 1:3) {
    message(paste0(x, i))
  }
}
FUN("hello")

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