CODEWITHSUNDEEP
r
Wwalk
Wwalk

Reputation: 41

library() function fails to load multiple packages

When I included janitor package with other packages, it did not load.

library(MASS, caret, stepPlr, janitor)

Error in library(MASS, caret, stepPlr, janitor) : object 'janitor' not found

When I ran that command separately with only janitor package, it got loaded into session; with no error 

> library(janitor)
Warning message:
package ‘janitor’ was built under R version 3.3.3

Is there any limit with including x number of packages at a time? Or there is something wrong with my RStudio?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 6667

Answers (3)

xm1
xm1

Reputation: 1765

The straight answer was indicated by @Technophobe01

sapply(c('MASS', 'caret', 'stepPlr', 'janitor'), require, character.only = TRUE)

Upvotes: 2

Sam Firke
Sam Firke

Reputation: 23004

The function p_load from the pacman package allows for listing multiple packages like this, and will install them if any are not already present:

library(pacman)
p_load(MASS, caret, stepPlr, janitor)

This is not only user-friendly, it also improves reproducibility for running the same script across multiple users or environments.

Upvotes: 5

Technophobe01
Technophobe01

Reputation: 8666

The library() function isn't meant to load multiple libraries, a better approach is to create a list of packages, and use require() to check if they are installed and if not install them. See example below:

requiredPackages <- c("MASS", "caret", "stepPlr", "janitor")


ipak <- function(pkg){
        new.pkg <- pkg[!(pkg %in% installed.packages()[, "Package"])]
        if (length(new.pkg))
                install.packages(new.pkg, dependencies = TRUE)
        sapply(pkg, require, character.only = TRUE)
}

ipak(requiredPackages)

Upvotes: 4

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