How to manually create and load namespaces in R

Question

Is it possible to manually create and load a namespace environment foo (without making an actual foo package), so that we can use the double colon operator foo::test to access objects in this environment?

The attach function attaches a list or environment to the search path:

foo <- list(test=123)
attach(foo)
get("test", "foo")

But this does give the user access to foo::test obviously.

So you want to use `::` to access objects in the environment instead of `$`? — A5C1D2H2I1M1N2O1R2T1, Jul 14 '14 at 18:10
Perhaps related: Konrad Rudolph's [modules](https://github.com/klmr/modules) system for R (not sure of what you're trying to achieve). — A5C1D2H2I1M1N2O1R2T1, Jul 14 '14 at 18:12

Jeroen Ooms · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-10T08:52:30.723

1

It turns out that this is possible with the largely undocumented namespace package:

library(namespace)
ns <- makeNamespace("myNamespace")
assign("test", 7, env=ns)
setNamespaceInfo(ns, "exports", as.environment(list(test="test")))
print(myNamespace::test)

Not sure how safe this is though. For example sessionInfo doesn't work anymore:

> sessionInfo()
Error in if (pkgpath == "") { : argument is of length zero

edited Aug 10 '14 at 08:52

answered Aug 09 '14 at 09:53

Jeroen Ooms

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You can also check how `modules` creates namespaces: https://github.com/klmr/modules – Gabor Csardi Sep 01 '14 at 04:18

How to manually create and load namespaces in R

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