Use selective imports

[MichaelChirico]

data.table/NAMESPACE

Line 133 in 07fd933

import(utils)

In general it's preferable (perhaps just IMO) to import selectively vs. blanket import(pkg). Blanket imports risk unintended collisions, especially as packages evolve (add+remove functions), though the risk for the case of default packages (methods/utils/stats) is more borderline.

[Nj221102]

Hi @MichaelChirico i want to work on this issue , can i get assigned and what can be a good approach to know specifically which methods/classes we need to import selectively from the default packages (methods/utils/stats)

[ben-schwen]

One way to do this is to grep for each function in a package. You can list all functions from a package with ls("package:utils"). With this you can create yourself a regex for searching via grep. Then you can grep in the R directory with grep -E -r -n searchString .

Note that you might have to use the function name without any brackets since we sometimes assign function aliases like in fread with ./fread.R:103: FUN = if (w==2L) untar else unzip

You might want to use multiple different search string, e.g. for aliases paste0("(", paste0(" ", ls("package:utils"), " ", collapse="|"), ")") and for function calls something like (download.file\([a-Z]+|capture.output\([a-Z]+)

Michael as regex ninja might come up with a more elegant search string though

[Nj221102]

One way to do this is to grep for each function in a package. You can list all functions from a package with ls("package:utils"). With this you can create yourself a regex for searching via grep. Then you can grep in the R directory with grep -E -r -n searchString .

Note that you might have to use the function name without any brackets since we sometimes assign function aliases like in fread with ./fread.R:103: FUN = if (w==2L) untar else unzip

You might want to use multiple different search string, e.g. for aliases paste0("(", paste0(" ", ls("package:utils"), " ", collapse="|"), ")") and for function calls something like (download.file\([a-Z]+|capture.output\([a-Z]+)

Thanks will try using this method :)

[MichaelChirico]

I would say it's easier to just remove the import(utils) line and run R CMD check. it should fail and the output will tell you which symbols are not defined anymore.

[Nj221102]

I would say it's easier to just remove the import(utils) line and run R CMD check. it should fail and the output will tell you which symbols are not defined anymore.

thanks :)