Many functions in R provide some sort of console output (such as NbClust() etc.) Is there any way of retrieving some of the output (e.g. a certain integer value) without having a look at the output? Any way of reading from the console?
Imagine the output would look like the following output from example code provided in the package manual:
[1] "Frey index : No clustering structure in this data set"
*** : The Hubert index is a graphical method of determining the number of clusters.
In the plot of Hubert index, we seek a significant knee that corresponds to a
significant increase of the value of the measure i.e the significant peak in Hubert
index second differences plot.
*** : The D index is a graphical method of determining the number of clusters.
In the plot of D index, we seek a significant knee (the significant peak in Dindex
second differences plot) that corresponds to a significant increase of the value of
the measure.
*******************************************************************
* Among all indices:
* 1 proposed 2 as the best number of clusters
* 2 proposed 4 as the best number of clusters
* 2 proposed 6 as the best number of clusters
* 1 proposed 7 as the best number of clusters
***** Conclusion *****
* According to the majority rule, the best number of clusters is 4
*******************************************************************
How would I retrieve the value 4 from the last line of the above output?
It is better to work with objects rather than output in the console. Any "good" function would return hopefully structured output that can be accessed using $ or @ signs, use str() to see object's structure.
In your case, I think this should work:
length(unique(res$Best.partition))