CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rpackagesearch-pathname-collision
ahala
ahala

Reputation: 4803

How to unmask a function in R, due to name collisions on searchpath

When I loaded package debug to debug a script with zoo objects, I got trouble: function index from zoo got masked by debug package. How can I unmask index? In general, how to deal with these name colliding problems? We just do not use debug package with `zoo'?

Upvotes: 12

Views: 13831

Answers (3)

Lionel Henry
Lionel Henry

Reputation: 6801

You can detach the package which has masked functions and then reattach it. It will regain precedence in the search path:

detach("package:zoo")
library("zoo")

In the future, if you want to attach a package while preventing it from masking other functions, you can specify its position in the search path with an arbitrary large number:

library("debug", pos = .Machine$integer.max)

Upvotes: 15

G. Grothendieck
G. Grothendieck

Reputation: 531

Its only masked to you but its not masked to zoo so when a zoo function tries to use index it will still find its own index first.

zoo also has a time.zoo method so if z is a zoo object you can use time(z) in place of index(z).

Finally you can always refer to zoo::index to make sure you get the one in zoo.

Upvotes: 4

Dirk is no longer here
Dirk is no longer here

Reputation: 368639

Exported symbols are always identifiable with the :: operator:

zoo::index

Hidden functions not declared in the namespace can still be accessed using ::: (triple-colon), and example would be 

zoo:::.onLoad

which you can see even though it is not exported.

Upvotes: 11

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