I haven't used Pentadactyl for a long time and don't have it installed currently, but looking at their documentation:
Excerpt:
:! Run an external command. Runs through system() and displays its output. Any ‘!’ in is replaced with the previous external command, so long as it is not preceded by a backslash and 'banghist' is enabled. :sil:silent:sil[ent] Execute a command silently. Normal messages and error messages generated by the command invocation will not be displayed and will not be added to the message history.
If you are using !
now and getting the output, maybe :sil
would work the way you want?
Alternatively, :verb
:
:[count]verb[ose] Execute a command with 'verbose' set to [count]. If [count] is not specified then 1 is used.
might be a better option.