Question

I’m starting to work with R. Although I’m more used to python.

I want to do a script in R that uses the library MASS. I though about doing a Try, Except to see if the library exists, otherwise install it.
Something like this:

Try:
    library("MASS")
Except SomeError:
    install.packages("MASS")
    library("MASS")

Or perhaps in R this doesn’t make much sense.
Anyway any suggestions is welcome 🙂

Answer 1

The function require is virtually identical to library, except it returns a logical value.

> x <- require("MASS")
> x
[1] TRUE

> x <- require("notExist")
Loading required package: notExist
Warning message:
In library(package, lib.loc = lib.loc, character.only = TRUE, logical.return = TRUE,  :
  there is no package called 'notExist'
> x
[1] FALSE

This means you can use a simple if statement, something like:

if(!require("MASS")) install.packages("MASS")

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R also has an error capturing mechanism. Read about it at ?try or ?tryCatch