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When to quote a package name

2 messages · Muenchen, Robert A (Bob), Uwe Ligges

Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)
# 
Dear HelpeRs,

I'm confused about the role of quotes around package names on the
library and detach functions. Books on R use both approaches:

library(Hmisc)
describe(mydata)
detach(package:Hmisc)

and

library("Hmisc")
describe(mydata)
detach("package:Hmisc")

The help file for detach says "quoted or unquoted" and the help file for
library says about the package, "the name of a package, given as a name
or literal character string, or a character string, depending on whether
character.only is FALSE (default) or TRUE)."

Are there conditions under which it matters? Which is best?

Thanks,
Bob

=========================================================
Bob Muenchen (pronounced Min'-chen), 
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=========================================================
Uwe Ligges
#
Muenchen, Robert A (Bob) wrote:
The cleaner approach is to use quotes. I'd expect

x <- "Hmisc"
library(x)

to install package "Hmisc", but not package "x"...
In fact, it also installs "x" (as documented), unfortunately.

Uwe Ligges