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
packageDescriptionreturns 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.

packageVersionreturns the version (as a package_version object).
maintainerreturns the the maintainer (as a string containing an email address) of the package.
.
packageDatereturns 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 6.1.4-13
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