pkgDesc function

Version of packageDescription() as Simple Vector

a simple version , or wrapper for packageDescription(), returning a named character vector, including "file", and still has a useful print()

method.

pkgDesc (pkg, lib.loc = NULL, fields = NULL, ...)
pkgBuilt(pkg, lib.loc = NULL, ...)

Arguments

• pkg: a character string, name of an installed package.
• lib.loc: library location to find the package in; the default NULL uses the full .libPaths().
• fields: a character vector (or NULL) specifying fields to be returned.
• ...: further optional arguments passed to packageDescription().

Returns

a named character vector, with names, the fields, identical to the names of the list returned by packageDescription, plus its "file" attribute. Additionally the resulting vector is of class "Dlist" which activates a useful print() method.

Author(s)

Martin Maechler, Jan. 2021

Note

The file is always returned; not the least that the author wants to see it quite often as his .libPaths() is non-trivial and typically longer than 4 entries.

See Also

packageDescription, .libPaths.

Examples

str(pd <- pkgDesc("sfsmisc"))
pd[c("Date","Packaged", "Built","file")]

pkgBuilt("sfsmisc")

## Show "Built" (and "file") for all packages whose namespaces are loaded:
lNs <- loadedNamespaces()
mlNs <- sapply(lNs, pkgBuilt)
t(mlNs) # typically prints nicely

pkgs <- c("grid", "lattice", "MASS", "Matrix", "nlme", "lme4", "sfsmisc")
pkgs <- c("foobar", "barbar", pkgs, "kitty") # + names that typically don't exist
pkgsOk <- basename(find.package(pkgs, quiet=TRUE))
mpkg <- sapply(pkgsOk, pkgBuilt)
stopifnot(is.matrix(mpkg), nrow(mpkg) == 2)
mpkg["Built",]