collidr

collidr checks for namespace collisions against half a million packages and functions on CRAN.

Usage

See if a function/package called “group_by”, like so

# install.packages("collidr")
library(collidr)

CRAN_collisions("group_by", CRANdf = getCRAN())

• substitute “group_by” for any function name you wish to check

Advantages

Distinctly named functions

• reduce code ambiguity, and,
• reduce unintentional function calls
  • e.g. you may code select() meaning dplyr::select(), but instead (uninentionally) invoke MASS::select() due to the MASS library being loaded after dplyr

Caveats

collidr::CRANdf is the data.frame used to store the names of packages and functions found on CRAN. You can see when it was last updated with attributes(collidr::CRANdf)$last_updated. Retrieve a more up to date version with getCRAN().

Due to how this data.frame is obtained, the results are not perfect. The absense of a function name from the data.frame does not guarantee that the function is not on CRAN, and, conversely, a function name found in the data.frame doesn’t guarantee that it is a function in a package on CRAN.

These imperfections are due to imperfections in the regular expressions required to parse the ~16,000 libraries found on CRAN.

How collidr Works

collidr runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure and visits CRAN every 3 hours, parses package information, and stores and updated data.frame in S3. The data.frame is accessible for download, or via getCRAN()

Issues and Feature Requests

When reporting an issue, please include:

• Example code that reproduces the observed behavior.
• An explanation of what the expected behavior is.

For feature requests, raise an issue with the following:

• The desired functionality
• Example inputs and desired output

Pull Requests

Pull requests are welcomed.

Any new functions should follow the conventions established by the the package’s existing functions. Please ensure

• Functions are sensibly named
• The intent of the contribution is clear
• At least one example is provided in the documentation

Build Info

Whenever CRANdf is updated, use save(CRANdf, file = "data/CRANdf.RData", version = 2, compress='xz') to save it

And build/check with:

R CMD build collidr && R CMD check collidr_0.1.3.tar.gz --as-cran