Get version number from the DESCRIPTION file in an R-package-CodePudding

Is there a neat way for functions within an R-package to get access to its version number specified in the DESCRIPTION-file (of that R-package)?

CodePudding user response：

Using installed.packages() perhaps.

installed.packages()['MASS', 'Version']
# [1] "7.3-57"

CodePudding user response：

You can use the packageVersion() function:

packageVersion("MASS")
#> [1] '7.3.56'
packageVersion("MASS") >= "7.3.9"  # Compares as version, not character
#> [1] TRUE

^{Created on 2022-06-05 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

Depending on how many packages you have installed, this will also be much faster than using installed.packages():

microbenchmark::microbenchmark(packageVersion("MASS"), installed.packages()['MASS', 'Version'])
#> Unit: microseconds
#>                                     expr      min       lq      mean    median
#>                   packageVersion("MASS")  315.500  336.111  392.9827  370.0415
#>  installed.packages()["MASS", "Version"] 4648.788 4811.913 7278.9214 4893.4105
#>         uq        max neval cld
#>   425.8515    796.667   100  a 
#>  5055.4825 235622.901   100   b

^{Created on 2022-06-05 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}