R: Listing of all CRAN archived R packages

archivedPkg

R Documentation

Listing of all CRAN archived R packages

Description

Retrieve a list of all currently archived R packages and their archive date

Usage

archivedPkg(
  startsWith = c("all", letters),
  after = NULL,
  inc.date = TRUE,
  as = c("data.frame", "list")
)

Arguments

`startsWith`	one letter that the package name starts with eg. a, e, f
`after`	packages archived after a specific date eg. 2011-05-10
`inc.date`	should archive date be included in the result
`as`	return result as data frame or as list

Value

a data frame or list containing listing of all archived R packages

Use case

This function allows the retrieval of various R packages archived by CRAN along with the respective latest archive date. The packages retrieved include both active and inactive R projects submitted to CRAN. When a new version of an active R package is published, the older versions of the package gets archived. In the same way, when a package is decommissioned from CRAN active projects for one reason or another, it gets archived.

Note

* The "startsWith" argument should be one letter and should be in lowercase
* If no argument is provided for "startsWith", all the packages will be retrieved
* The format of the "after" argument must be YYYY-MM-DD e.g. 2022-04-11

Examples


# Task 1: get archived R packages with names beginning with C or All
head(archivedPkg(startsWith = "all"), n= 10) #retrieves all packages
head(archivedPkg(startsWith = "c"), n= 10) #retrieves only packages beginning with a

# Task 2: return the packages from Task 1 without including latest archive date
res.dt2 <- archivedPkg(startsWith = "b", inc.date = FALSE)
res.dt2[1:10,]

# Task 3: return the results from Task 2 as a list
res.dt3 <- archivedPkg(startsWith = "c", inc.date = FALSE, as = "list")
res.dt3$name[1:10]

res.dt3 <- archivedPkg(startsWith = "e", as = "list")
res.dt3$name[1:10]

# Task 4: return the archived packages beginning with Y archived after 2022-08-12
# Note that startsWith should be lowercase

#without archive date
yRPkg <- archivedPkg(startsWith = "y", after= NULL)
nrow(yRPkg) #number of rows returned
head(yRPkg, n = 15) #show first 15 rows

#with archive date
yRPkg2 <- archivedPkg(startsWith = "y", after= "2022-08-12")
nrow(yRPkg2) #number of rows returned
head(yRPkg2, n = 15) #show first 15 rows, notice no archive date before 2022-08-12