The basics of R packages: what are packages, and why should you incorporate their use into your R experience? Where can you find packages?.

You’ll cover the following topics and 11 frequently asked user questions: If you are starting with R, this post will cover the basics of R packages and how to use them. For example, if you are usually working with data frames, probably you will have heard about dplyr or data.table, two of the most popular R packages.īut imagine that you'd like to do some natural language processing of Korean texts, extract weather data from the web, or even estimate actual evapotranspiration using land surface energy balance models, R packages got you covered! Recently, the official repository ( CRAN) reached 10,000 packages published, and many more are publicly available through the internet. They increase the power of R by improving existing base R functionalities, or by adding new ones.

From now on, you only need to do Part 2 each time you close and restart R.R packages are collections of functions and data sets developed by the community. All done. R will spit out a lot more output because it needs to install other packages required for gplots.Īgain, you will only need to do Part 1 one time on your computer.Type “library(gplots)” and then press the Enter/Return key.Again, choose one close to unless you want to watch a loading bar slowly inch its way to fulfillment. If not, R will automatically prompt you to choose a mirror. If you have already loaded a package from a server in the R session, then R will automatically install the package.Type “install.packages(“gplots”)” and then press the Enter/Return key.Part 1-Getting the Package onto Your Computer Use this method once you get more acquainted with the whole copy and paste business. From now on, you only need to do Part 2 each time you close and restart R. You will only need to do Part 1 once time on your computer.

Type “library(ggplot2)” and then press the Enter/Return key.You will know when the package has been downloaded onto your computer when another greater-than symbol (“>”) appears.If you would like to install multiple packages, click on each one while holding the CTRL key or the cloverleaf-looking key. Now you get to choose which packages you want to install.

Download packages in r