4D Pie Charts

Sometimes it can be useful to list all the functions inside a package. This is done in the same way that you would list variables in your workspace. That is, using ls. The syntax is ls(pos = "package:packagename"), which is easy enough if you can remember it. Unfortunately, I never can, and have to type search() first to see what the format of that string is.

Today, that problem is solved with a tiny utility function to save remembering things, and to save typing.

lsp <- function(package, all.names = FALSE, pattern) 
{
  package <- deparse(substitute(package))
  ls(
      pos = paste("package", package, sep = ":"), 
      all.names = all.names, 
      pattern = pattern
  )
}

all.names and pattern behave in the same way as they do in regular ls. You use it like this:

lsp(base)
lsp(base, TRUE)
lsp(base, pattern = "^is")

EDIT: I’ve had a couple of questions about the use case, and there are some interesting comments on alternatives. My thinking behind this function was that I sometimes know I’ve seen a function in a package but can’t remember what it’s called. If you can hazard a guess at the name, then apropos is probably better, though it looks everywhere on the search path rather than in a particular package. Autocompletion is also useful for this, but you need to know the first few characters of what you are looking for. (Activate autocompletions by pressing TAB in R GUI or Rstudio or CTRL+space in eclipse. I can’t remember what the shortcut is in emacs, but you probably just mash CTRL+META until you have RSI.) Finally, the unknownR package is useful for finding new functions that you hadn’t heard of yet.