Re-exporting the magrittr pipe operator

… or how I stoped worrying and wrote a blog post to remember it ad infinitum.

Magrittr’s pipe operator is one of those newish R-universe features that I really want to have around whenever I put some lines into an R-console. This is even TRUE when writing a package.

So the first thing I do is put magrittr into the DESCRIPTION file and add an __imports.R file to the packages R/-directory with the following lines:

#' re-export magrittr pipe operator
#'
#' @importFrom magrittr %>%
#' @name %>%
#' @rdname pipe
#' @export
NULL

These lines import and re-export the pipe operator (%>%) therewith allowing to use it within my package but also beeing able to use it interactively whenever the package is loaded.

Best of all these lines will also ensure passing all package checks (CRAN complient) and preventing any “The following objects are masked from …” messages.

Last but not least the file name “__imports.R” serves two purposes (1) making the it appear at the very beginning of an alphabetical sorted lists of file names and (2) second giving it a speaking name to inform – however reads the file name – that some R “Imports” are most likely happening inside.

Happy coding!

PS.: Those lines above require the usage of roxygen2 as documentation framework.