R - Suppress try() output to console when trapping an Rselenium expression

Question

The following code sends output to the console when the expression fails even though the try() argument silent = TRUE.

dd = try(unlist(remDr$findElement("css", "#ctl00_mainA")), silent = TRUE)

suppressMessages() does not suppress the output.

dd = suppressMessages(try(unlist(remDr$findElement("css", "#ctl00_mainA")), silent = TRUE))

try() is used to trap the error Selenium message: Unable to locate element: ......... The code logic works perfectly; the script continues to run as intended.

The message is not an Error that appears in red. The message is in black; the same color that results from print() and cat().

Echo is off. The source code does not print to the console.

I want to suppress the message while retaining the ability to send messages to the console with print() and cat().

Would appreciate any ideas.

Answer 1

Use remDr$findElements() instead with the same arguments. If the element you are looking for doesn't exist it just returns a zero length list which is easy to test for, and you don't get a lengthy error message printed to the console.