#Update packages in r how to#
#Update packages in r install#

For this example, IвЂ™ll use the foreign package. That seems straightforward enough, so letвЂ™s try loading and unloading packades.

The little x-mark next to the version number is a button that you can push to uninstall the package from your computer (you almost never need this).

The number next to the description tells you what version of the package you have installed.

The short passage of text next to the name is a brief description of the package.

The one word of text immediately to the right of the check box is the name of the package.The check box on the far left column indicates whether or not the package is loaded.44 Going from left to right, hereвЂ™s what each column is telling you: Every row in the panel corresponds to a different package, and every column is a useful piece of information about that package. Click on the tab, and youвЂ™ll see a list of packages that looks something like Figure 4.1. The first thing you need to do is look in the lower right hand panel in Rstudio. This two step process might seem a little odd at first, but the designers of R had very good reasons to do it this way, 43 and you get the hang of it pretty quickly.Д¤.2.1 The package panel in Rstudio Figure 4.1: The packages panel. Basically what it boils down to is this:ДЄ package must be installed before it can be loaded.ДЄ package must be loaded before it can be used. Generally, when you open up R, only a few of these packages (about 7 or 8) are actually loaded. In order for R to be able to use one of your 30 or so installed packages, that package must also be вЂњloadedвЂќ. The critical thing to remember is that just because something is on your computer doesnвЂ™t mean R can use it.

So thatвЂ™s what installed means: it means вЂњitвЂ™s on your computer somewhereвЂќ. So right now there are about 30 packages вЂњinstalledвЂќ on your computer, and another 5000 or so that are not installed.

#Update packages in r install#

42 When you install R on your computer, you donвЂ™t get all of them: only about 30 or so come bundled with the basic R installation. As of this writing, there are just over 5000 R packages freely available вЂњout thereвЂќ on the internet. However, before we get started, thereвЂ™s a critical distinction that you need to understand, which is the difference between having a package installed on your computer, and having a package loaded in R. IвЂ™ll explain them as we go, because I think that helps you understand whatвЂ™s going on. Along the way, youвЂ™ll see that whenever you get Rstudio to do something (e.g., install a package), youвЂ™ll actually see the R commands that get created.

#Update packages in r how to#

In this section, IвЂ™ll describe how to work with packages using the Rstudio tools, because theyвЂ™re so much simpler. Fortunately, we donвЂ™t have to do things that way anymore. ItвЂ™s not actually terribly hard to work with packages that way, but itвЂ™s clunky and unpleasant. When I first started writing this book, Rstudio didnвЂ™t really exist as a viable option for using R, and as a consequence I wrote a very lengthy section that explained how to do package management using raw R commands.

Some packages are already installed when you put R on your computer, but the vast majority of them of R packages are out there on the internet, waiting for you to download, install and use them. A package is basically just a big collection of functions, data sets and other R objects that are all grouped together under a common name. In this section I discuss R packages, since almost all of the functions you might want to use in R come in packages.