Load multiple packages at once?

Question

How can I load a bunch of packages at once with out retyping the require command over and over? I've tried three approaches all of which crash and burn.Basically, I want to supply a vector of package names to a function that will load them. x<-c("plyr", "psych", "tm") require(x) lapply(x, require) do.call("require", x)

Answer 1

That is close!

What you'll want to specify when using "lapply()" is "character.only = TRUE", like so

x <- c("plyr", "psych", "tm")

lapply(x, require, character.only = TRUE)

Although this does work, it doesn't mean you should do this always.

I prefer to more explicitly so it is easier to read and understand. Plus I can put comments about those packages.

library(plyr) # Help manipulate data

library(psych) # Toolbox for personality, psychometric theory and experimental psychology

library(tm) # Text mining tools

Side note, I would also use "library()" rather than "require". I also switched to using "require" for a little bit, but then I read this blog post https://yihui.name/en/2014/07/library-vs-require/

Basically, "require" will only attempt to load the package before going on. If it doesn't exist, it'll continue running code. This will not be helpful downstream in your code because then R will say some function doesn't exist, when in reality, it is because a package wasn't loaded. Using "library()" would have caught this.