cli_alter_* with cat(), symbols positioned at end of output

[eli-daniels]

Hello,
Thanks for a very cool package! I ran into this issue when combining cat() with cli_alert_* functions.

I would have expected the ouputs of following two code chunks to be the same:

> cli::cli_alert_danger('hello you')
✖ hello you

> cli::cli_alert_danger(cat( 'hello',  'you' ))
hello you✖ 

But the ✖ is in the wrong position in the second case.

[gaborcsardi]

I am not sure why you expected that. cat() prints the text and returns NULL before cli::cli_alert_danger() is even called. So I am not sure how cli_alert_danger() could do anything differently here.

❯ print(cat( 'hello',  'you' ))
hello youNULL

[eli-daniels]

Okay, I probably just don't really understand what cat() does. I'm getting my intended output by replacing it with paste().
Anyway, thanks for your help!

[gaborcsardi]

cat() prints to the screen (by default) and does not return anything:

❯ x <- cat("foo", "bar")
foo bar
❯ x
NULL

[eli-daniels]

Right, so the strings are printed directly to console by cat() which returns NULL to cli_alert_* which only then prints the symbol. Got it, thanks!