R Tutorial: Packages and Namespaces

Key Takeaways

our packages are wonderful things when we use an hour package we get a number of benefits for free for example when interacting with our we live in a wonderful global environment any objects we create a place to save this environment or this box we can view the contents of the box with a la assumption but any mildly complex analysis quickly fills up this box the consequences who lose track of what's going on and even while says we might mix up two objects and start introducing hard to find bugs when we water package the contents of the package isn't placed into the global environment instead it's awarded into its namespace I think of namespaces is a box that contains all the package functions the namespace keeps things tidy it's just like a folder on your desktop now when we use a library function we get direct access to this package box we can see the functions or the exported functions more precisely by the gate namespace exports the deep flyer package has over 200 exported functions sometimes we want to specify exactly which box a function belongs to we can do that with a double core and operator no great minds think alike or saw the same Goods and package offers are just the same take the filter function in the status package filter is used for manipulating time series but deep wire is used to remove rows from a data frame so the million pound question is if I take filter which function do I get the answer is it depends it depends on the order that packages were loaded in the search function returns this order our goes through each environment looking for the object you want it returns the object it comes to that mashes you request the global environment is always fast on this list then the order is determined by the package law bottom namespace clashes that is when two functions have the same name and appeared and can lead to hard to diagnose bugs a relatively new package aims to meet this process a little bit easier the conflated package automatically highlights potential package clashes and forces the user ie OS to make a clear choice for example suppose reward the deep ire package when we come to use a filter function the conflicted package pilots issue and makes us explicitly choose right tend to wake up and put what we've discussed