Getting system notifications with R

So today I was making quite time consuming simulations in R, and I was wondering if there was a way to know when the simulations were finished so I could have a look at the results. Relevant xkcd:

For those familiar with bash scripting in Linux, you can use notify-send to, well, send desktop notifications using the libnotify library. For those familiar with R, you may also know that R can directly execute system commands using the system() function.

Having this in mind, the answer to my problem was just creating a function that

• can execute any¹ R call
• prints the elapsed time to execute it
• sends a permanent desktop notification
• emits a completion alert sound²

Of course, I decided to call the function lok_regar():

lok_regar <- function(call) {
  print(system.time(call))
  system("notify-send -i rstudio -u critical 'Finished calculations' 'Get back to work!'")
  system("paplay /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/complete.oga")
}

I’m not sure this function is the most elegant way to do this, but it’s pretty easy to use and does its job, and it looks pretty:

In the future I would like to print the elapsed time into the notification itself, but I’m not quite sure it’s possible.