CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rnamespacesdplyr
mjreed
mjreed

Reputation: 155

Avoiding function name conflicts in R

I recently ran into a situation in which existing R code broke due the introduction of the dplyr library. Specifically, the lag function from the stats package, is being replaced by dplyr::lag. The problem is previously documented here, however no work around is provided. Research into R namespaces and environments leads to 2 possible solutions, neither very robust in my opinion:

  1. Make sure that package:stats appears first in the search() path so that lag resolves as the function in the stats package.
  2. Change all references of lag in my code to stats::lag

My question is whether either of these other solutions are possible:

  1. Loading the dplyr package in a way to force it to be in a "private" namespace in which its objects can only be accessed through the :: operator.
  2. A directive at library loading to force lag to resolve as stats::lag. This could be done either by removing dplyr::lag or overriding the search path (similar to the C++ using namespace::function directive.)

Upvotes: 11

Views: 2637

Answers (1)

CourtesyBus
CourtesyBus

Reputation: 351

you should consider library(conflicted) as it's designed for exactly this problem.
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/conflicted/index.html

putting conflicted::conflict_prefer(name = "lag", winner = "stats") after you load your packages ensures that anytime the function lag() is called in your script, it will use the stats function by default.

Upvotes: 6

Related Questions