[R] Risks of using "function <- package::function" ?

[Jeff Newmiller]

Obvious?  How about "obscurity"? Just directly use pkg::fun if you have name collision. 
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On November 16, 2017 4:46:15 PM PST, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>On 16/11/2017 4:53 PM, Boris Steipe wrote:
>> Large packages sometimes mask each other's functions and that creates
>a headache, especially for teaching code, since function signatures may
>depend on which order packages were loaded in. One of my students
>proposed using the idiom
>> 
>>    <function> <- <package>::<function>
>> 
>> ... in a preamble, when we use just a small subset of functions from
>a larger package. I like that idea and can't see obvious
>disadvantages(1).
>> 
>> Are there subtle risks to that approach?
>
>You might do it twice.  R isn't going to complain if you have
>
>filter <- stats::filter
>
># some other code here...
>
>filter <- dplyr::filter
>
>in your code, but the second one will overwrite the first one.
>
>The normal way to handle this is in the NAMESPACE file, where you
>should 
>have
>
>importFrom(stats, filter)
>
>If you then have
>
>importFrom(dplyr, filter)
>
>you should get an warning:
>
>Warning: replacing previous import ‘stats::filter’ by ‘dplyr::filter’ 
>when loading ‘testpkg’.
>
>Duncan Murdoch
>
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