packageDescription
Read a Package's DESCRIPTION File

### Description

Reads the DESCRIPTION file, or specific fields from the DESCRIPTION file, for the specified package.

### Usage

    packageDescription(pkg, lib.loc = NULL, fields = NULL, drop = TRUE,
                       encoding = "")
    packageVersion(pkg, lib.loc = NULL)
    maintainer(pkg)
    packageDate(pkg, lib.loc = NULL,
        date.fields = c("Date", "Packaged", "Date/Publication", "Built"),
        tryFormats = c("%Y-%m-%d", "%Y/%m/%d", "%D", "%m/%d/%y"),
        desc = packageDescription(pkg, lib.loc = lib.loc, fields = date.fields))

### Arguments

pkg | a character string specifying the package name.
lib.loc | a character vector specifying the library directories where pkg is installed. The default searches the library directories given by .libPaths().
fields | a character vector specifying the tags in the DESCRIPTION file to return. The default is to return all fields.
drop | a logical value. If TRUE (the default), and the length of fields is one, then a single character string is returned instead of an object of class "packageDescription".
encoding | the string encoding to use for newly-created strings. (See Encoding.) In Spotfire Enterprise Runtime for R, this argument is not implemented.
date.fields | the names of the fields in which to look for a date. The first one containing a string parseable by one of the tryFormats will be used. The field will be split by semicolons and each piece will be parsed.
tryFormats | character strings to use as formats passed to as.Date.character when converting the date fields to Date objects. The first one to successfully parse a date field will be used.
desc | a packageDescription object, typically produced by calling packageDescription with the other arguments to packageDate.

Value

packageDescription | returns an object of class "packageDescription". You can use a print method to display this returned object. The object "packageDescription" includes a "file" attribute that indicates the file system location of the DESCRIPTION file. Returns a single character string containing the fields value from the DESCRIPTION file if drop=TRUE and the fields is of length one.
packageVersion | returns the version (as a package_version object).
maintainer | returns the the maintainer (as a string containing an email address) of the package.

.

packageDate | returns a Data derived object from the first field of the description file containing something that is interpretable as a date.

Differences between Spotfire Enterprise Runtime for R and Open-source R
In Spotfire Enterprise Runtime for R, the encoding argument is not implemented. If this argument is given, a warning is generated.
See Also
Encoding, .libPaths, as.Date.
Examples

    packageDescription("base")  # the base Spotfire Enterprise Runtime for R package description
    packageDescription("arbor")  # the arbor package description
    maintainer("stats")         # email address for questions about this package
    packageVersion("stats")     # the version of the package.
    packageDate("stats")        # the date the package was built.

Package utils version 6.1.5-18
Package Index