[R] object(s) are masked from package - what does it mean?

[Gregor Gorjanc]

tom soyer <tom.soyer <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> Sometime when I attach a dataset, R gives me the following
> message/warning:"The following object(s) are masked from package:datasets:
> column_name". Does anyone know what it means? Since it seems that the
> dataset was attached and I could manipulate the data from the dataset
> without problems, I am wondering what was R trying to tell me.

As far as I understand it: Imagine there is a package A with object tmp and you
load it. When you load another package B with object of the same name i.e. tmp
then you will access tmp from package B and not A. You might work though with
namespaces, :: and :::

Gregor