What is the difference between require() and library()?

Question

What is the difference between require() and library()?

Answer 1

You can use require() if you want to install packages if and only if necessary, such as:

if (!require(package, character.only=T, quietly=T)) {
    install.packages(package)
    library(package, character.only=T)
}

For multiple packages you can use

for (package in c('', '')) {
    if (!require(package, character.only=T, quietly=T)) {
        install.packages(package)
        library(package, character.only=T)
    }
}

Pro tips:

• When used inside the script, you can avoid a dialog screen by specifying the repos parameter of install.packages(), such as

  install.packages(package, repos="http://cran.us.r-project.org")
  

• You can wrap require() and library() in suppressPackageStartupMessages() to, well, suppress package startup messages, and also use the parameters require(..., quietly=T, warn.conflicts=F) if needed to keep the installs quiet.