How do I print a variable inside a for loop to the console in real time, as the loop is running, in R?

Question

I have a loop that takes a long time for each iteration, and I would like to see the progress of it in real time. How do I print a variable inside a for loop to the console

Answer 1

The cat() function allows you to make useful complex statements to keep track of progress in your script

for(i in 1:10){
  ptm0 <- proc.time()
  Sys.sleep(0.5)  
  ptm1=proc.time() - ptm0
  jnk=as.numeric(ptm1[3])
  cat('\n','It took ', jnk, "seconds to do iteration", i)
}

>It took  0.49 seconds to do iteration 1