R help - Sep 2014 - Masked from package

When a library is loaded messages such as these are displayed:

The following object is masked from ?package:base?:

     norm

The following object is masked from ?package:NADA?:

     cor

   What do I read to understand just what being masked means?

Rich

Hi Rich,

I believe it means that when called, the function norm() in the 'base'
and the function cor () in the 'NADA' packages are not going to be
used, but rather functions of the same name (norm and cor) in the
package that you loaded with your library () function.

Same applies to other objects also.

HTH,
Ranjan

On Wed, 24 Sep 2014 11:22:55 -0700 Rich Shepard
<rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
>    When a library is loaded messages such as these are displayed:
> 
> The following object is masked from ?package:base?:
> 
>      norm
> 
> The following object is masked from ?package:NADA?:
> 
>      cor
> 
>    What do I read to understand just what being masked means?
> 
> Rich
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

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On 24/09/2014 2:22 PM, Rich Shepard wrote:
>     When a library is loaded messages such as these are displayed:
>
> The following object is masked from ?package:base?:
>
>       norm
>
> The following object is masked from ?package:NADA?:
>
>       cor
>
>     What do I read to understand just what being masked means?
I'm not sure if the word "masked" is used, but the R Language
Definition
manual talks about the scope of variables.  The messages say that 
something just loaded has an object named "norm", and it is hiding the
function of that name in the base package.  Similarly, you just loaded a 
function called "cor", so the one in NADA is hidden.  (When you loaded
NADA you probably got a warning that its "cor" was hiding the one in
the
stats package.   So there are 3 "cor" functions now, and you really
need
to be careful that you're using the right one.)

Duncan Murdoch

And to answer the ?What do I read ...?? question

  help.search('masked?)

returns quite a few things on my system, and the one you want is

  base::conflicts         Search for Masked Objects on the Search Path

Then of course
  ?conflicts

Also, having seen those messages, you can do
  find(?norm?)
  find(?cor?)

-Don  


-- 
Don MacQueen

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
7000 East Ave., L-627
Livermore, CA 94550
925-423-1062





On 9/24/14, 11:22 AM, "Rich Shepard" <rshepard at
appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
>   When a library is loaded messages such as these are displayed:
>
>The following object is masked from ?package:base?:
>
>     norm
>
>The following object is masked from ?package:NADA?:
>
>     cor
>
>   What do I read to understand just what being masked means?
>
>Rich
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide
>http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.