What is the difference between require() and library()?

Question

What is the difference between require() and library()?

Answer 1

There's not much of one in everyday work.

However, according to the documentation for both functions (accessed by putting a ? before the function name and hitting enter), require is used inside functions, as it outputs a warning and continues if the package is not found, whereas library will throw an error.

Answer 2

Another benefit of require() is that it returns a logical value by default. TRUE if the packages is loaded, FALSE if it isn't.

> test <- library("abc")
Error in library("abc") : there is no package called 'abc'
> test
Error: object 'test' not found
> test <- require("abc")
Loading required package: abc
Warning message:
In library(package, lib.loc = lib.loc, character.only = TRUE, logical.return = TRUE,  :
  there is no package called 'abc'
> test
[1] FALSE

So you can use require() in constructions like the one below. Which mainly handy if you want to distribute your code to our R installation were packages might not be installed.

if(require("lme4")){
    print("lme4 is loaded correctly")
} else {
    print("trying to install lme4")
    install.packages("lme4")
    if(require(lme4)){
        print("lme4 installed and loaded")
    } else {
        stop("could not install lme4")
    }
}