"import as" in R

This is not quite what you want because it involves changing from :: notation to $ notation, but if you load a package namespace (without attaching it), you can then refer to it by its environment name:

h <- loadNamespace('Hmisc')p <- loadNamespace('plyr')> summarize(iris$Sepal.Length, iris$Species, FUN=mean)Error: could not find function "summarize"> Hmisc::summarize(iris$Sepal.Length, iris$Species, FUN=mean)  iris$Species iris$Sepal.Length1       setosa             5.0062   versicolor             5.9363    virginica             6.588> h$summarize(iris$Sepal.Length, iris$Species, FUN=mean)  iris$Species iris$Sepal.Length1       setosa             5.0062   versicolor             5.9363    virginica             6.588> summarise(iris, x = mean(Sepal.Length))Error: could not find function "summarise"> plyr::summarise(iris, x = mean(Sepal.Length))         x1 5.843333> p$summarise(iris, x = mean(Sepal.Length))         x1 5.843333

Note, however, that you do lose access to documentation files using the standard ? notation (e.g., ? p$summarise does not work). So, it will serve you well as shorthand, but may not be great for interactive use since you'll still have to resort to ? plyr::summarise for that.

Note also that you do not have access to the data objects stored in the package using this approach.

Here's a solution that should only be used for interactive mode. You modify :: so that it can accept character package names, then write a function to register the aliases.

`::` <- function(pkg, name) {    sym <- as.character(substitute(pkg))    pkg <- tryCatch(get(sym, envir=.GlobalEnv), error=function(e) sym)    name <- as.character(substitute(name))    getExportedValue(pkg, name)}pkg.alias <- function(alias, package) {    assign(alias, package, .GlobalEnv)    lockBinding(alias, .GlobalEnv)}pkg.alias('r', 'reshape2')r::dcast

But instead of using aliases, you could also redefine :: to find the package that matches your abbreviation:

`::` <- function(pkg, name)  {    pkg <- as.character(substitute(pkg))    pkg <- installed.packages()[grepl(paste0('^', pkg), installed.packages())]    name <- as.character(substitute(name))    getExportedValue(pkg, name)}ggp::ggplot

Rather than aliasing the package, why not just alias the function?

hsumm <- Hmisc::summarizedsumm <- dplyr::summarizepsumm <- plyr::summarize

I was starting down an eval(parse()) path, but I ran into trouble and need to get back to work. @Thomas's answer seems to get a similar result in a much smoother way, but here's the non-working draft.

package_alias <- function(package, alias, infix = "..") {    funs <- ls(paste0("package:", package))    for (i in seq_along(funs)) {        assign(paste0(alias, infix, funs[i]),        value = eval(parse(text = funs[i])), envir = .GlobalEnv)    }}

With the idea that you could do something like

package_alias("plyr", "p")

to create p..ddply, etc.