“import as” in R

Question

Is there a way to import a package with another name in R, the way you might with import as in Python, e.g. import numpy as np? I\'ve been starting

Answer 1

Rather than aliasing the package, why not just alias the function?

hsumm <- Hmisc::summarize
dsumm <- dplyr::summarize
psumm <- plyr::summarize

I was starting down an eval(parse()) path, but I ran into trouble and need to get back to work. @Thomas's answer seems to get a similar result in a much smoother way, but here's the non-working draft.

package_alias <- function(package, alias, infix = "..") {
    funs <- ls(paste0("package:", package))
    for (i in seq_along(funs)) {
        assign(paste0(alias, infix, funs[i]),
        value = eval(parse(text = funs[i])), envir = .GlobalEnv)
    }
}

With the idea that you could do something like

package_alias("plyr", "p")

to create p..ddply, etc.