Rscript does not load methods package, R does — why, and what are the consequences?

Question

Just saw this:

$ Rscript -e \"sessionInfo()[\'basePkgs\']\"
$basePkgs
[1] \"stats\"     \"graphics\"  \"grDevices\" \"utils\"     \"datasets\"  \"base\"

$ R         


        

Answer 1

According to ?Rscript the methods package isn't loaded because, "The default for Rscript omits methods as it takes about 60% of the startup time."