So far, we’ve only been working with functions built in to a basic install of R. People write a lot of additional code and build or gather a lot of data sets that they package up ready for others to use in R. These bundles of code and data are called packages. Packages add additional functionality to what we can do with R. The central repository for R packages is CRAN – The Comprehensive R Archive Network.
Packages are installed in libraries on your system. Because of this, in R we install packages, but we load libraries to make them available for use. Libraries need to be loaded each time we launch R.
You can see what packages are currently installed on you system with
installed.packages()## Package
## abind "abind"
## antiword "antiword"
## ape "ape"
## aplot "aplot"
## AsioHeaders "AsioHeaders"
## askpass "askpass"
## LibPath
## abind "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources/library"
## antiword "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources/library"
## ape "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources/library"
## aplot "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources/library"
## AsioHeaders "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources/library"
## askpass "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources/library"
## Version Priority Depends
## abind "1.4-5" NA "R (>= 1.5.0)"
## antiword "1.3.1" NA NA
## ape "5.6-2" NA "R (>= 3.2.0)"
## aplot "0.1.9" NA NA
## AsioHeaders "1.22.1-2" NA NA
## askpass "1.1" NA NA
## Imports
## abind "methods, utils"
## antiword "sys (>= 2.0)"
## ape "nlme, lattice, graphics, methods, stats, tools, utils,\nparallel, Rcpp (>= 0.12.0)"
## aplot "ggfun (>= 0.0.9), ggplot2, ggplotify, patchwork, magrittr,\nmethods, utils"
## AsioHeaders NA
## askpass "sys (>= 2.1)"
## LinkingTo Suggests Enhances
## abind NA NA NA
## antiword NA NA NA
## ape "Rcpp" "gee, expm, igraph, phangorn" NA
## aplot NA "ggtree" NA
## AsioHeaders NA NA NA
## askpass NA "testthat" NA
## License License_is_FOSS License_restricts_use OS_type
## abind "LGPL (>= 2)" NA NA NA
## antiword "GPL-2" NA NA NA
## ape "GPL-2 | GPL-3" NA NA NA
## aplot "Artistic-2.0" NA NA NA
## AsioHeaders "BSL-1.0" NA NA NA
## askpass "MIT + file LICENSE" NA NA NA
## MD5sum NeedsCompilation Built
## abind NA "no" "4.2.0"
## antiword NA "yes" "4.2.0"
## ape NA "yes" "4.2.0"
## aplot NA "no" "4.2.0"
## AsioHeaders NA "no" "4.2.0"
## askpass NA "yes" "4.2.0"Calculate how many packages are installed on your system.
installed_packages <- installed.packages() # load the contents into a variable
nrow(installed_packages) # print the number of rowsNew packages can be installed with
install.packages("package-name")We need to install ggplot2
install.packages("ggplot2")Packages can be loaded with
library(package-name)So, to load ggplot
library(ggplot2)You will sometimes see people use require() instead of
library() to load a package. Generally, either may be
used.
You’ll also note that when you install a package, the name is wrapped
in quotation marks, " ", but when you load a package, it is
not.
You can get a list of any packages with updates available with
old.packages()And packages can be updated with
update.packages()Packages provide additional functionality. You can install packages
with install.packages() and load them with
library().
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
installed.packages |
print a matrix of installed packages |
install.packages |
Install a new package. |
library |
Load an installed package. |
old.packages |
List packages with updates. |
update.packages |
Update packages to the latest release. |