legitimate use of :::
This is what I was getting at as well. It would be great to have a call like
require(package, c('funtion.1','function.2'))
or similar that gives users granular control over what gets imported in the shell. I would be drunk with joy if the same mechanism could be used to automatically populate the package directives.
On Aug 22, 2013, at 8:01 PM, Peter Meilstrup <peter.meilstrup at gmail.com> wrote:
It would be nice if the functionality of importFrom() and import() were available to user level code, rather than just to people building packages for distribution. One most often encounters namespace conflicts at the user level, when loading two packages that have no logical connection other than both bearing on your problem of the moment. R conflates "having namespaces" with "having a library distribution mechanism" and while its library distribution mechanism is top notch, most modern languages do not require you to learn the distribution procedure in order to just have namespaces. For instance, in Python you merely put code in a file called foo.py and then in any other file in the same directory you type "import functionName from foo". I.E. using namespaces does not require you to build/install packages. Python namespaces are also hierarchical so that the question of this thread would easily be resolved by putting functions into foo._internal and in other packages typing import * from "foo._internal" Peter [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
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