library(name, help = NULL, lib.loc = .lib.loc, character.only = FALSE, logical.return = FALSE, warn.conflicts = TRUE) require(name, quietly = FALSE) provide(name) .First.lib(libname, pkgname) .packages(all.available = FALSE, lib.loc = .lib.loc) .lib.loc .Library .Provided .Autoloaded
name, help
|
name or character string giving the name of a
package.
|
lib.loc
| a character vector describing the location of R library trees to search through. |
character.only
|
a logical indicating whether name or
help can be assumed to be character strings.
|
logical.return
|
logical. If it is TRUE , FALSE or
TRUE is returned to indicate success.
|
warn.conflicts
|
logical. If TRUE , warnings are
printed about conflicts from attaching the new package.
|
quietly
|
a logical. If TRUE , a warning will not be
printed if the package cannot be found.
|
libname
| a character string giving the library directory where the package was found. |
pkgname
| a character string giving the name of the package. |
all.available
|
logical; if TRUE return character
vector of all available packages in lib.loc .
|
library(name)
and require(name)
both load the package
named name
. provide
allows code to register services that
it provides.
.First.lib()
is called when a package is loaded by library()
.
.packages()
and the .xxx
variables return information about
package availability.
library(name)
and require(name)
both load the package
with name name
. require
is designed for use inside
other functions; it returns FALSE
and optionally gives a
warning, rather than giving an error, if the package does not exist.
Both functions check and update the list of currently loaded packages
and do not reload code that is already loaded. require
also
checks the list .Provided
.
provide
allows code to register services that it provides. The
argument is stored in the list .Provided
. provide
returns FALSE
if the name was already present in
.Provided
or among the packages in search()
. The main
use for provide
is when multiple packages share code. This is
most likely when the code implements features present in S(-PLUS) but
not in R. For example, the spline functions ns
, bs
and
so on are not included in the R distribution. A package containing
these functions can use provide(splines)
to register this fact.
Another package that needs the functions can execute
require(splines)
rather than library(splines)
to load
the spline package only if their functionality is not already available.
If library
is called with no name
or help
argument, it gives a list of all available packages in lib.loc
and invisibly returns their names (same as .packages(all=T)
).
library(help = name)
prints information on
the package name
, typically by listing the most important user
level objects it contains.
.First.lib()
is called when a package is loaded by
library(.)
. It is called with two arguments, the name of the
library tree where the package was found (i.e., the corresponding
element of lib.loc
), and the name of the package (in that
order). It is a good place to put calls to library.dynam()
which are needed when loading a package into this function (don't call
library.dynam()
directly, as this will not work if the package
is not installed in a ``standard'' location). .First.lib()
is invoked after search()
has been updated, so
pos.to.env(match("package:name"), search())
will return the
environment in which the package is stored.
.packages()
returns the ``base names'' of the currently attached
packages invisibly whereas .packages(all.available =TRUE)
gives (visibly) all packages available in the library
location path lib.loc
.
.Autoloaded
contains the ``base names'' of the packages for
which autoloading has been promised.
.Library
is a character string giving the location of the
default library, the ``library'' subdirectory of RHOME
.
.lib.loc
is a character vector with the locations of all
library trees that R should use. It is initialized at startup from
the environment variable RLIBS
, which should be a
colon-separated list of directories at which R library trees are
rooted, and .Library
.
library
returns the list of loaded (or available) packages (or
TRUE
if logical.return
is TRUE
).
require
returns a logical indicating whether the required
package is available.eda
, mva
, and stepfun
.
A package consists of a subdirectory containing the files `DESCRIPTION', `INDEX', and `TITLE', and the subdirectories `R', `data', `exec', `man', and `src' (some of which can be missing).
The `DESCRIPTION' file contains information about authors, version, copyright, etc., and looks like
Package:
Version:
Author:
Description:
Depends:
License:
Continuation lines (e.g., for descriptions longer than one line) start with a whitespace character. The license field should contain an explicit statement or a well-known abbreviation (such as `GPL', `LGPL', `BSD' and `Artistic'), maybe followed by a reference to the actual license file. It is very important that this information is includedotherwise, it may not even be legally correct for others to distribute copies of the package.
The `TITLE' file contains a line giving the name of the package
and a brief description. `INDEX' contains a line for each
sufficiently interesting object in the package, giving its name and a
description (functions such as print methods not usually called
explicitly might not be included). Note that you can automatically
create this file using the Rdindex
program in `RHOME/etc',
provided that Perl is available on your system.
The `R' subdirectory contains R code files. The code files to
be installed must start with a (lower- or uppercase) letter and have
one of the extensions `.R', `.S', `.q', `.r', or
`.s'. We recommend using `.R', as this extension seems to
be not used by any other software. If necessary, one of these files
(historically `zzz.R') should use library.dynam()
inside .First.lib()
to load compiled code.
The `man' subdirectory should contain R documentation files for the objects in the package. The documentation files to be installed must also start with a (lower- or uppercase) letter and have the extension `.Rd' (the default) or `.rd'.
Source and a Makefile for the compiled code is in `src',
containing C, FORTRAN, or Ratfor source. The Makefile will be
passed various machine-dependent compile and link flags, examples of
which can be seen in the eda
package.
The `data' subdirectory is for additional data files the package
makes available for loading using data()
. Currently, data
files can have one of three types as indicated by their extension:
plain R code (`.R' or `.r'), tables (`.tab',
`.txt', or `.csv'), or save()
images (`.RData'
or `.rda'). See the documentation for data()
for more
information. If there is a `data' subdirectory it should contain
a `00Index' file that describes the datasets available.
Finally, `exec' could contain additional executables the package needs, typically Shell or Perl scripts. This mechanism is currently not used by any package, and still experimental.
all.available=TRUE
part of .packages
.attach
, detach
, search
,
objects
, autoload
,
library.dynam
;
data
;
INSTALL
, REMOVE
( .packages() ) # maybe just "base" .packages(all = TRUE) # return all available as char.vector library() # list all available packages library(lib = .Library) # list all packages in the default library library(help = eda) # documentation on package "eda" library(eda) # load package "eda" require(eda) # the same ( .packages() ) # "eda", too require(nonexistent) # FALSE ## Suppose the a package needs to call a shared library named "foo.EXT", ## where "EXT" is the system-specific extension. Then you should use .First.lib <- function(lib, pkg) { library.dynam("foo", pkg, lib) }