Packages

Packages are a set of functions, constants, and/or data developed by the community that add functionality to R.

In this section, we look at where to find packages and how to install them.

Looking for packages

• Package finder
• Your peers and the literature

Package documentation

• List of CRAN packages
• Package documentation

Managing R packages

R packages can be installed, updated, and removed from within R:

install.packages("package-name")
remove.packages("package-name")
update_packages()

Loading packages

To make a package available in an R session, you load it with the library() function.

Example:

library(readxl)

Alternatively, you can access a function from a package without loading it with the syntax: package::function().

Example:

readxl::read_excel("file.xlsx")