[Rd] Trying to understand the search path and namespaces

[Martin Morgan]

On 11/15/2010 04:56 PM, Hadley Wickham wrote:
>> Well, that's what I thought too.  But:
>>
>> parents <- function(x) {
>>  if (identical(x, emptyenv())) return()
>>  c(environmentName(x), parents(parent.env(x)))
>> }
>>> parents(as.environment("package:devtools"))
>> [1] "package:devtools" "package:methods"  "Autoloads"        "base"
>>
>> And package:testthat isn't listed there.  (But Autoloads is suggestive...)
> 
> Hmmm, autoloads isn't it:
> 
>> parent.env(parent.env(as.environment("package:devtools")))
> <environment: 0x100951f88>
> attr(,"name")
> [1] "Autoloads"
>> ls(parent.env(parent.env(as.environment("package:devtools"))))
> character(0)

1.6 of Writing R Extensions says

Note that adding a name space to a package changes the search strategy.
The package name space comes first in the search, then the imports, then
the base name space and then the normal search path.

I'm not sure of the details, but I think

  parents(getNamespace("devtools"))

will give you what you want, with the gory details in loadNamespace
makeNamespace

Martin


> 
> Hadley
> 


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