Skip to content

rlang 1.1.4

CRAN release: 2024-06-04

  • Added missing C level r_dyn_raw_push_back() and r_dyn_chr_push_back() utilities (#1699).

  • last_trace() hyperlinks now use the modern x-r-run format (#1678).

rlang 1.1.3

CRAN release: 2024-01-10

  • Fix for CRAN checks.

  • %||% is now reexported from base on newer R versions. This avoids conflict messages when attaching or importing rlang.

rlang 1.1.2

CRAN release: 2023-11-04

  • Fixed an off-by-one typo in the traceback source column location (#1633).

  • abort() now respects the base R global option, options(show.error.messages = FALSE) (#1630).

  • obj_type_friendly() now only displays the first class of S3 objects (#1622).

  • expr_label() now has back-compatility with respect to changes made by R version 4.4 and is.atomic(NULL) (#1655)

  • Performance improvement in .rlang_cli_compat() (#1657).

rlang 1.1.1

CRAN release: 2023-04-28

  • englue() now allows omitting {{. This is to make it easier to embed in external functions that need to support either { and {{ (#1601).

  • Fix for CRAN checks.

  • stop_input_type() now handles I() input literally in arg (#1607, @simonpcouch).

  • parse_expr() and parse_exprs() are now faster when getOption("keep.source") is TRUE (#1603).

rlang 1.1.0

CRAN release: 2023-03-14

Life cycle changes

Main new features

  • last_error() and options(rlang_backtrace_on_error = "full") now print the full backtrace tree by default (except for some hidden frames). The simplified backtraces tended to hide important context too often. Now we show intervening frames in a lighter colour so that they don’t distract from the important parts of the backtraces but are still easily inspectable.

  • global_entrace(), last_warnings(), and last_messages() now support knitr documents.

  • New rlang_backtrace_on_warning_report global option. This is useful in conjunction with global_entrace() to get backtraces on warnings inside RMarkdown documents.

  • global_entrace() and entrace() now stop entracing warnings and messages after 20 times. This is to avoid a large overhead when 100s or 1000s of warnings are signalled in a loop (#1473).

  • abort(), warn(), and inform() gain an .inherit parameter. This controls whether parent is inherited. If FALSE, cnd_inherits() and try_fetch() do not match chained conditions across parents.

    It’s normally TRUE by default, but if a warning is chained to an error or a message is chained to a warning or error (downgraded chaining), .inherit defaults to FALSE (#1573).

  • try_fetch() now looks up condition classes across chained errors (#1534). This makes try_fetch() insensitive to changes of implementation or context of evaluation that cause a classed error to suddenly get chained to a contextual error.

  • englue() gained env, error_arg, and error_call arguments to support being wrapped in another function (#1565).

  • The data-masking documentation for arguments has been imported from dplyr. You can link to it by starting an argument documentation with this button:

    <[`data-masking`][rlang::args_data_masking]>
  • enquos() and friends gain a .ignore_null argument (#1450).

  • New env_is_user_facing() function to determine if an evaluation frame corresponds to a direct usage by the end user (from the global environment or a package being tested) or indirect usage by a third party function. The return value can be overridden by setting the "rlang_user_facing" global option.

Miscellaneous fixes and features

  • New check_data_frame() and check_logical() functions in standalone-types-check.R (#1587, @mgirlich).

  • Added allow_infinite argument to check_number_whole() (#1588, @mgirlich).

  • The lifecycle standalone file has been updated to match the modern lifecycle tools.

  • parse_expr() now supports vectors of lines (#1540).

  • Quosures can now be consistently concatenated to lists of quosures (#1446).

  • Fixed a memory issue that caused excessive duplication in list2() and friends (#1491).

  • Embraced empty arguments are now properly detected and trimmed by quos() (#1421).

  • Fixed an edge case that caused enquos(.named = NULL) to return a named list (#1505).

  • expr_deparse() now deparses the embrace operator {{ on a single line (#1511).

  • zap_srcref() has been rewritten in C for efficiency (#1513).

  • zap_srcref() now supports expression vectors.

  • The non-error path of check_dots_unnamed() has been rewritten in C for efficiency (#1528).

  • Improved error messages in englue() (#1531) and in glue strings in the LHS of := (#1526).

  • englue() now requires size 1 outputs (#1492). This prevents surprising errors or inconsistencies when an interpolated input of size != 1 makes its way into the glue string.

  • arg_match() now throws correct error when supplied a missing value or an empty vector (#1519).

  • is_integerish() now handles negative doubles more consistently with positive ones (@sorhawell, #1530).

  • New check_logical() in standalone-types-check.R (#1560).

  • quo_squash() now squashes quosures in function position (#1509).

  • is_expression() now recognises quoted functions (#1499). It now also recognises non-parsable attributes (#1475).

  • obj_address() now supports the missing argument (#1521).

  • Fixed a check_installed() issue with packages removed during the current R session (#1561).

  • new_data_mask() is now slightly faster due to a smaller initial mask size and usage of the C level function R_NewEnv() on R >=4.1.0 (#1553).

  • The C level r_dyn_*_push_back() utilities are now faster (#1542).

  • The C level r_lgl_sum() and r_lgl_which() helpers are now faster (#1577, with contributions from @mgirlich).

  • rlang is now compliant with -Wstrict-prototypes as requested by CRAN (#1508).

rlang 1.0.6

CRAN release: 2022-09-24

  • as_closure(seq.int) now works (#1468).

  • rlang no longer stores errors and backtraces in a org:r-lib environment on the search path.

  • The low-level function error_call() is now exported (#1474).

  • Fixed an issue that caused a failure about a missing is_character function when rlang is installed alongside an old version of vctrs (#1482).

  • Fixed an issue that caused multiline calls in backtraces.

  • The C API function r_lgl_which() now propagates the names of the input (#1471).

  • The pkg_version_info() function now allows == for package version comparison (#1469, @kryekuzhinieri).

rlang 1.0.5

CRAN release: 2022-08-31

  • Fixed backtrace display with calls containing long lists of arguments (#1456).

  • New r_obj_type_friendly() function in the C library (#1463). It interfaces with obj_type_friendly() from compat-obj-type.R via a C callable.

rlang 1.0.4

CRAN release: 2022-07-12

rlang 1.0.3

CRAN release: 2022-06-27

  • Child errors may now have empty messages to enable this pattern:

    Error in `my_function()`:
    Caused by error in `their_function()`:
    ! Message.
  • The rlib_bytes class now uses prettyunits to format bytes. The bytes are now represented with decimal prefixes instead of binary prefixes.

  • Supplying a frame environment to the call argument of abort() now causes the corresponding function call in the backtrace to be highlighted.

    In addition, if you store the argument name of a failing input in the arg error field, the argument is also highlighted in the backtrace.

    Instead of:

    cli::cli_abort("{.arg {arg}} must be a foobar.", call = call)

    You can now write this to benefit from arg highlighting:

    cli::cli_abort("{.arg {arg}} must be a foobar.", arg = arg, call = call)
  • abort(message = ) can now be a function. In this case, it is stored in the header field and acts as a cnd_header() method invoked when the message is displayed.

  • New obj_type_oo() function in compat-obj-type.R (#1426).

  • friendly_type_of() from compat-obj-type.R (formerly compat-friendly-type.R) is now obj_type_friendly().

  • options(backtrace_on_error = "collapse") and print(trace, simplify = "collapse") are deprecated. They fall back to "none" with a warning.

  • call_match() now better handles ... when dots_expand = FALSE.

  • list2(!!!x) is now faster when x is a list. It is now returned as is instead of being duplicated into a new list.

  • abort() gains a .trace_bottom argument to disambiguate from other .frame. This allows cli::cli_abort() to wrap abort() in such a way that .internal mentions the correct package to report the error in (#1386).

  • The transpose() compat is now more consistent with purrr when inner names are not congruent (#1346).

  • New reset_warning_verbosity() and reset_message_verbosity() functions. These reset the verbosity of messages signalled with warn() and inform() with the .frequency argument. This is useful for testing verbosity in your package (#1414).

  • check_dots_empty() now allows trailing missing arguments (#1390).

  • Calls to local functions that are not accessible through :: or ::: are now marked with (local) in backtraces (#1399).

  • Error messages now mention indexed calls like foo$bar().

  • New env_coalesce() function to copy bindings from one environment to another. Unlike approaches based on looping with [[<-, env_coalesce() preserves active and lazy bindings.

  • Chaining errors at top-level (directly in the console instead of in a function) no longer fails (#1405).

  • Warning style is propagated across parent errors in chained error messages (#1387).

  • check_installed() now works within catch-all tryCatch(error = ) expressions (#1402, tidyverse/ggplot2#4845).

  • arg_match() and arg_match0() now mention the correct call in case of type error (#1388).

  • abort() and inform() now print messages to stdout in RStudio panes (#1393).

  • is_installed() now detects unsealed namespaces (#1378). This fixes inconsistent behaviour when run within user onLoad hooks.

  • Source references in backtraces and last_error()/last_trace() instructions are now clickable in IDEs that support links (#1396).

  • compat-cli.R now supports style_hyperlink().

  • abort(.homonyms = "error") now throws the expected error (#1394).

  • env_binding_are_active() no longer accidentally triggers active bindings (#1376).

  • Fixed bug in quo_squash() with nested quosures containing the missing argument.

rlang 1.0.2

CRAN release: 2022-03-04

  • Backtraces of parent errors are now reused on rethrow. This avoids capturing the same backtrace twice and solves consistency problems by making sure both errors in a chain have the same backtrace.

  • Fixed backtrace oversimplification when cnd is a base error in abort(parent = cnd).

  • Internal errors thrown with abort(.internal = TRUE) now mention the name of the package the error should be reported to.

  • Backtraces are now separated from error messages with a --- ruler line (#1368).

  • The internal bullet formatting routine now ignores unknown names (#1364). This makes it consistent with the cli package, increases resilience against hard-to-detect errors, and increases forward compatibility.

  • abort() and friends no longer calls non-existent functions (e.g. cli::format_error() or cli::format_warning) when the installed version of cli is too old (#1367, tidyverse/dplyr#6189).

  • Fixed an OOB subsetting error in abort().

rlang 1.0.1

CRAN release: 2022-02-03

  • New rlang_call_format_srcrefs global option (#1349). Similar to rlang_trace_format_srcrefs, this option allows turning off the display of srcrefs in error calls. This can be useful for reproducibility but note that srcrefs are already disabled within testthat by default.

  • abort(parent = NA) is now supported to indicate an unchained rethrow. This helps abort() detect the condition handling context to create simpler backtraces where this context is hidden by default.

  • When parent is supplied, abort() now loops over callers to detect the condition handler frame. This makes it easier to wrap or extract condition handlers in functions without supplying .frame.

  • When parent is supplied and call points to the condition setup frame (e.g. withCallingHandlers() or try_fetch()), call is replaced with the caller of that setup frame. This provides a more helpful default call.

  • is_call() is now implemented in C for performance.

  • Fixed performance regression in trace_back().

  • Fixed a partial matching issue with header, body, and footer condition fields.

  • eval_tidy() calls are no longer mentioned in error messages.

rlang 1.0.0

CRAN release: 2022-01-26

Major changes

This release focuses on the rlang errors framework and features extensive changes to the display of error messages.

  • abort() now displays errors as fully bulleted lists. Error headers are displayed with a ! prefix. See https://rlang.r-lib.org/reference/topic-condition-customisation.html to customise the display of error messages.

  • abort() now displays a full chain of messages when errors are chained with the parent argument. Following this change, you should update dplyr to version 1.0.8 to get proper error messages.

  • abort() now displays function calls in which a message originated by default. We have refrained from showing these calls until now to avoid confusing messages when an error is thrown from a helper function that isn’t relevant to users.

    To help with these cases, abort() now takes a call argument that you can set to caller_env() or parent.frame() when used in a helper function. The function call corresponding to this environment is retrieved and stored in the condition.

  • cli formatting is now supported. Use cli::cli_abort() to get advanced formatting of error messages, including indented bulleted lists. See https://rlang.r-lib.org/reference/topic-condition-formatting.html.

  • New try_fetch() function for error handling. We recommend to use it for chaining errors. It mostly works like tryCatch() with a few important differences.

    • Compared to tryCatch(), try_fetch() preserves the call stack. This allows full backtrace capture and allows recover() to reach the error site.

    • Compared to withCallingHandler(), try_fetch() is able to handle stack overflow errors (this requires R 4.2, unreleased at the time of writing).

  • The tidy eval documentation has been fully rewritten to reflect current practices. Access it through the “Tidy evaluation” and “Metaprogramming” menus on https://rlang.r-lib.org.

Breaking changes

  • The .data object exported by rlang now fails when subsetted instead of returning NULL. This new error helps you detect when .data is used in the wrong context.

    We’ve noticed several packages failing after this change because they were using .data outside of a data-masking context. For instance the by argument of dplyr::join() is not data-masked. Previously dplyr::join(by = .data$foo) would silently be interpreted as dplyr::join(by = NULL). This is now an error.

    Another issue is using .data inside ggplot2::labs(...). This is not allowed since labs() isn’t data-masked.

  • call_name() now returns NULL instead of "::" for calls of the form foo::bar.

    We’ve noticed some packages do not check for NULL results from call_name(). Note that many complex calls such as foo()(), foo$bar() don’t have a “name” and cause a NULL result. This is why you should always check for NULL results when using call_name().

    We’ve added the function is_call_simple() to make it easier to work safely with call_name(). The invariant is that call_name() always returns a string when is_call_simple() returns TRUE. Conversely it always returns NULL when is_call_simple() retuns FALSE.

  • is_expression() now returns FALSE for manually constructed expressions that can’t be created by the parser. It used to return TRUE for any calls, including those that contain injected objects.

    Consider using is_call() or just remove the expression check. In many cases it is fine letting all objects go through when an expression is expected. For instance you can inject objects directly inside dplyr arguments:

    x <- seq_len(nrow(data))
    dplyr::mutate(data, col = !!x)
  • If a string is supplied to as_function() instead of an object (function or formula), the function is looked up in the global environment instead of the calling environment. In general, passing a function name as a string is brittle. It is easy to forget to pass the user environment to as_function() and sometimes there is no obvious user environment. The support for strings should be considered a convenience for end users only, not for programmers.

    Since environment forwarding is easy to mess up, and since the feature is aimed towards end users, as_function() now defaults to the global environment. Supply an environment explicitly if that is not correct in your case.

  • with_handlers(), call_fn(), and friendly_type() are deprecated.

  • The action argument of check_dots_used(), check_dots_unnamed(), and check_dots_empty() is deprecated in favour of the new error argument which takes an error handler.

  • Many functions deprecated in rlang 0.2.0 and 0.3.0 have been removed from the package.

Fixes and features

tidyeval

  • New englue() operator to allow string-embracing outside of dynamic dots (#1172).

  • New data_sym() and data_syms() functions to create calls of the form .data$foo.

  • .data now fails early when it is subsetted outside of a data mask context. This provides a more informative error message (#804, #1133).

  • as_label() now better handles calls to infix operators (#956, r-lib/testthat#1432). This change improves auto-labelled expressions in data-masking functions like tibble(), mutate(), etc.

  • The {{ operator is now detected more strictly (#1087). If additional arguments are supplied through {, it is no longer interpreted as an injection operator.

  • The .ignore_empty argument of enexprs() and enquos() no longer treats named arguments supplied through ... as empty, consistently with exprs() and quos() (#1229).

  • Fixed a hang when a quosure inheriting from a data mask is evaluated in the mask again.

  • Fixed performance issue when splicing classes that explicitly inherit from list with !!! (#1140, r-lib/vctrs#1170).

  • Attributes of quosure lists are no longer modified by side effect (#1142).

  • enquo(), enquos() and variants now support numbered dots like ..1 (#1137).

  • Fixed a bug in the AST rotation algorithm that caused the !! operator to unexpectedly mutate injected objects (#1103).

  • Fixed AST rotation issue with !! involving binary operators (#1125).

rlang errors

  • try_fetch() is a flexible alternative to both tryCatch() and withCallingHandlers() (#503). It is also more efficient than tryCatch() and creates leaner backtraces.

  • New cnd_inherits() function to detect a class in a chain of errors (#1293).

  • New global_entrace() function, a user-friendly helper for configuring errors in your RProfile. Call it to enrich all base errors and warnings with an rlang backtrace. This enables last_error(), last_warnings(), last_messages(), and backtrace_on_error support for all conditions.

  • New global_handle() function to install a default configuration of error handlers. This currently calls global_entrace() and global_prompt_install(). Expect more to come.

  • The “Error:” part of error messages is now printed by rlang instead of R. This introduces several cosmetic and informative changes in errors thrown by abort():

    • The call field of error messages is now displayed, as is the default in base::stop(). The call is only displayed if it is a simple expression (e.g. no inlined function) and the arguments are not displayed to avoid distracting from the error message. The message is formatted with the tidyverse style (code formatting by the cli package if available).

    • The source location is displayed (as in base::stop()) if call carries a source reference. Source locations are not displayed when testthat is running to avoid brittle snapshots.

    • Error headers are always displayed on their own line, with a "!" bullet prefix.

    See https://rlang.r-lib.org/reference/topic-condition-customisation.html to customise this new display.

  • The display of chained errors created with the parent argument of abort() has been improved. Chains of errors are now displayed at throw time with the error prefix “Caused by error:”.

  • The print() method of rlang errors (commonly invoked with last_error()) has been improved:

    • Display calls if present.
    • Chained errors are displayed more clearly.
  • inform() and warn() messages can now be silenced with the global options rlib_message_verbosity and rlib_warning_verbosity.

  • abort() now outputs error messages to stdout in interactive sessions, following the same approach as inform().

  • Errors, warnings, and messages generated from rlang are now formatted with cli. This means in practice that long lines are width-wrapped to the terminal size and user themes are applied. This is currently only the case for rlang messages.

    This special formatting is not applied when abort(), warn(), and inform() are called from another namespace than rlang. See https://rlang.r-lib.org/reference/topic-condition-formatting.html if you’d like to use cli to format condition messages in your package.

  • format_error_bullets() (used as a fallback instead of cli) now treats:

    • Unnamed elements as unindented line breaks (#1130)
    • Elements named "v" as green ticks (@rossellhayes)
    • Elements named " " as indented line breaks
    • Elements named "*" as normal bullets
    • Elements named "!" as warning bullets

    For convenience, a fully unnamed vector is interpreted as a vector of "*" bullets.

  • abort() gains a .internal argument. When set to TRUE, a footer bullet is added to message to let the user know that the error is internal and that they should report it to the package authors.

  • abort(), warn(), and inform() gain a body argument to supply additional bullets in the error message.

  • rlang conditions now have as.character() methods. Use this generic on conditions to generate a whole error message, including the Error: prefix. These methods are implemented as wrappers around cnd_message().

  • header and footer methods can now be stored as closures in condition fields of the same name.

  • cnd_message() gains a prefix argument to print the message with a full prefix, including call field if present and parent messages if the condition is chained.

  • cnd_message() gains an inherit argument to control whether to print the messages of parent errors.

  • Condition constructors now check for duplicate field names (#1268).

  • cnd_footer() now returns the footer field by default, if any.

  • warn() and inform() now signal conditions of classes "rlang_warning" and "rlang_message" respectively.

  • The body field of error conditions can now be a character vector.

  • The error returned by last_error() is now stored on the search path as the .Last.error binding of the "org:r-lib" environment. This is consistent with how the processx package records error conditions. Printing the .Last.error object is now equivalent to running last_error().

  • Added is_error(), is_warning(), and is_message() predicates (#1220).

  • interrupt() no longer fails when interrupts are suspended (#1224).

  • warn() now temporarily sets the warning.length global option to the maximum value (8170). The default limit (1000 characters) is especially easy to hit when the message contains a lot of ANSI escapes, as created by the crayon or cli packages (#1211).

Backtraces

  • entrace() and global_entrace() now log warnings and messages with backtraces attached. Run last_warnings() or last_messages() to inspect the warnings or messages emitted during the last command.

  • Internal errors now include a winch backtrace if installed. The user is invited to install it if not installed.

  • Display of rlang backtraces for expected errors in dynamic reports (chunks where error = TRUE in knitted documents and RStudio notebooks) is now controlled by the rlang_backtrace_on_error_report option. By default, this is set to "none".

    The display of backtraces for unexpected errors (in chunks where error is unset or set to FALSE) is still controlled by rlang_backtrace_on_error.

  • The last_error() reminder is no longer displayed in RStudio notebooks.

  • A knitr::sew() method is registered for rlang_error. This makes it possible to consult last_error() (the call must occur in a different chunk than the error) and to set rlang_backtrace_on_error_report global options in knitr to display a backtrace for expected errors.

    If you show rlang backtraces in a knitted document, also set this in a hidden chunk to trim the knitr context from the backtraces:

    options(
      rlang_trace_top_env = environment()
    )

    This change replaces an ad hoc mechanism that caused bugs in corner cases (#1205).

  • The rlang_trace_top_env global option for trace_back() now detects when backtraces are created within knitr. If the option is not set, its default value becomes knitr::knit_global() when knitr is in progress (as determined from knitr.in.progress global option). This prevents the knitr evaluation context from appearing in the backtraces (#932).

  • Namespace changes are now emboldened in backtraces (#946).

  • Functions defined in the global environments or in local execution environments are now displayed with a space separator in backtraces instead of :: and :::. This avoids making it seem like these frame calls are valid R code ready to be typed in (#902).

  • Backtraces no longer contain inlined objects to avoid performance issues in edge cases (#1069, r-lib/testthat#1223).

  • External backtraces in error chains are now separately displayed (#1098).

  • Trace capture now better handles wrappers of calling handler in case of rethrown chained errors.

  • Backtraces now print dangling srcrefs (#1206). Paths are shortened to show only three components (two levels of folder and the file).

  • The root symbol in backtraces is now slightly different so that it can’t be confused with a prompt character (#1207).

Argument intake

  • arg_match() gains a multiple argument for cases where zero or several matches are allowed (#1281).

  • New function check_required() to check that an argument is supplied. It produces a more friendly error message than force() (#1118).

  • check_dots_empty(), check_dots_used(), and check_dots_unnamed() have been moved from ellipsis to rlang. The ellipsis package is deprecated and will eventually be archived.

    We have added check_dots_empty0(). It has a different UI but is almost as efficient as checking for missing(...). Use this in very low level functions where a couple microseconds make a difference.

  • The arg_nm argument of arg_match0() must now be a string or symbol.

  • arg_match() now mentions the supplied argument (#1113).

  • is_installed() and check_installed() gain a version argument (#1165).

  • check_installed() now consults the rlib_restart_package_not_found global option to determine whether to prompt users to install packages. This also disables the restart mechanism (see below).

  • check_installed() now signals errors of class rlib_error_package_not_found with a rlib_restart_package_not_found restart. This allows calling handlers to install the required packages and restart the check (#1150).

  • is_installed() and check_installed() now support DESCRIPTION-style version requirements like "rlang (>= 1.0)". They also gain version and compare arguments to supply requirements programmatically.

  • check_installed() gains an action argument that is called when the user chooses to install and update missing and outdated packages.

  • New check_exclusive() function to check that only one argument of a set is supplied (#1261).

R APIs

  • on_load() and run_on_load() lets you run .onLoad() expressions from any file of your package. on_package_load() runs expressions when another package is loaded. (#1284)

  • The new predicate is_call_simple() indicates whether a call has a name and/or a namespace. It provides two invariants:

    • If is_call_simple(x) is TRUE, call_name() always returns a string.

    • If is_call_simple(x, ns = TRUE) is TRUE, call_ns() always returns a string.

  • call_name() and call_ns() now return NULL with calls of the form foo::bar (#670).

  • New current_call(), caller_call(), and frame_call() accessors. New frame_fn() accessor.

  • env_has() and the corresponding C-level function no longer force active bindings (#1292).

  • New names2<- replacement function that never adds missing values when names don’t have names (#1301).

  • zap_srcref() now preserves attributes of closures.

  • Objects headers (as printed by last_error(), env_print(), …) are now formatted using the cls class of the cli package.

  • as_function() gains arg and call arguments to provide contextual information about erroring inputs.

  • is_expression() now returns FALSE for manually constructed expressions that cannot be created by the R parser.

  • New C callable rlang_env_unbind(). This is a wrapper around R_removeVarFromFrame() on R >= 4.0.0. On older R this wraps the R function base::rm(). Unlike rm(), this function does not warn (nor throw) when a binding does not exist.

  • friendly_type_of() now supports missing arguments.

  • env_clone() now properly clones active bindings and avoids forcing promises (#1228). On R < 4.0, promises are still forced.

  • Fixed an s3_register() issue when the registering package is a dependency of the package that exports the generic (#1225).

  • Added compat-vctrs.R file for robust manipulation of data frames in zero-deps packages.

  • Added compat-cli.R file to format message elements consistently with cli in zero-deps packages.

  • compat-purrr.R now longer includes pluck* helpers; these used a defintion of pluck that predated purrr (#1159). *_cpl() has also been removed. The map* wrappers now call as_function() so that you can pass short anonymous functions that use ~ (#1157).

  • exprs_auto_name() gains a repair_auto argument to make automatic names unique (#1116).

  • The .named argument of dots_list() can now be set to NULL to give the result default names. With this option, fully unnamed inputs produce a fully unnamed result with NULL names instead of a character vector of minimal "" names (#390).

  • is_named2() is a variant of is_named() that always returns TRUE for empty vectors (#191). It tests for the property that each element of a vector is named rather than the presence of a names attribute.

  • New rlib_bytes class imported from the bench package (#1117). It prints and parses human-friendly sizes.

  • The env argument of as_function() now defaults to the global environment. Its previous default was the caller of as_function(), which was rarely the correct environment to look in. Since it’s hard to remember to pass the user environment and it’s sometimes tricky to keep track of it, it’s best to consider string lookup as a convenience for end users, not for developers (#1170).

  • s3_register() no longer fails when generic does not exist. This prevents failures when users don’t have all the last versions of packages (#1112).

  • Formulas are now deparsed according to the tidyverse style guide (~symbol without space and ~ expression() with a space).

  • New hash_file(), complementing hash(), to generate 128-bit hashes for the data within a file without loading it into R (#1134).

  • New env_cache() function to retrieve a value or create it with a default if it doesn’t exist yet (#1081).

  • env_get() and env_get_list() gain a last argument. Lookup stops in that environment. This can be useful in conjunction with base::topenv().

  • New call_match() function. It is like match.call() but also supports matching missing arguments to their defaults in the function definition (#875).

    call_standardise() is deprecated in favour of call_match().

  • expr_deparse() now properly escapes \ characters in symbols, argument names, and vector names (#1160).

  • friendly_type_of() (from compat-friendly-type.R) now supports matrices and arrays (#141).

  • Updated env_print() to use format_error_bullets() and consistent tidyverse style (#1154).

  • set_names() now recycles names of size 1 to the size of the input, following the tidyverse recycling rules.

  • is_bare_formula() now handles the scoped argument consistently. The default has been changed to TRUE for compatibility with the historical default behaviour (#1115).

  • The “definition” API (dots_definitions() etc.) has been archived.

  • New is_complex() predicates to complete the family (#1127).

  • The C function r_obj_address() now properly prefixes addresses with the hexadecimal prefix 0x on Windows (#1135).

  • obj_address() is now exported.

  • %<~% now actually works.

  • XXH3_64bits() from the XXHash library is now exposed as C callable under the name rlang_xxh3_64bits().

rlang 0.4.12

CRAN release: 2021-10-18

  • Fix for CRAN checks.

rlang 0.4.11

CRAN release: 2021-04-30

  • Fix for CRAN checks.

  • Fixed a gcc11 warning related to hash() (#1088).

rlang 0.4.10

CRAN release: 2020-12-30

rlang 0.4.9

CRAN release: 2020-11-25

Breaking changes

  • Dropped support for the R 3.2 series.

New features

  • inject() evaluates its argument with !!, !!!, and {{ support.

  • New enquo0() and enquos0() operators for defusing function arguments without automatic injection (unquotation).

  • format_error_bullets() is no longer experimental. The message arguments of abort(), warn(), and inform() are automatically passed to that function to make it easy to create messages with regular, info, and error bullets. See ?format_error_bullets for more information.

  • New zap_srcref() function to recursively remove source references from functions and calls.

  • A new compat file for the zeallot operator %<-% is now available in the rlang repository.

  • New %<~% operator to define a variable lazily.

  • New env_browse() and env_is_browsed() functions. env_browse() is equivalent to evaluating browser() within an environment. It sets the environment to be persistently browsable (or unsets it if value = FALSE is supplied).

  • Functions created from quosures with as_function() now print in a more user friendly way.

  • New rlang_print_backtrace C callable for debugging from C interpreters (#1059).

Bugfixes and improvements

  • The .data pronoun no longer skips functions (#1061). This solves a dplyr issue involving rowwise data frames and list-columns of functions (tidyverse/dplyr#5608).

  • as_data_mask() now intialises environments of the correct size to improve efficiency (#1048).

  • eval_bare(), eval_tidy() (#961), and with_handlers() (#518) now propagate visibility.

  • cnd_signal() now ignores NULL inputs.

  • Fixed bug that prevented splicing a named empty vector with the !!! operator (#1045).

  • The exit status of is now preserved in non-interactive sessions when entrace() is used as an options(error = ) handler (#1052, rstudio/bookdown#920).

  • next and break are now properly deparsed as nullary operators.

rlang 0.4.8

CRAN release: 2020-10-08

  • Backtraces now include native stacks (e.g. from C code) when the winch package is installed and rlang_trace_use_winch is set to TRUE (@krlmlr).

  • Compatibility with upcoming testthat 3 and magrittr 2 releases.

  • get_env() now returns the proper environment with primitive functions, i.e. the base namespace rather than the base environment (r-lib/downlit#32).

  • entrace() no longer handles non-rlang errors that carry a backtrace. This improves compatibility with packages like callr.

  • Backtraces of unhandled errors are now displayed without truncation in non-interactive sessions (#856).

  • is_interactive() no longer consults “rstudio.notebook.executing” option (#1031).

rlang 0.4.7

CRAN release: 2020-07-09

  • cnd_muffle() now returns FALSE instead of failing if the condition is not mufflable (#1022).

  • warn() and inform() gain a .frequency argument to control how frequently the warning or message should be displayed.

  • New raw_deparse_str() function for converting a raw vector into a string of hexadecimal characters (@krlmlr, #978).

  • The backtraces of chained errors are no longer decomposed by error context. Instead, the error messages are displayed as a tree to reflect the error ancestry, and the deepest backtrace in the ancestry is displayed.

    This change simplifies the display (#851) and makes it possible to rethow errors from a calling handler rather than an exiting handler, which we now think is more appropriate because it allows users to recover() into the error.

  • env_bind(), env_bind_active(), env_bind_lazy(), env_get(), and env_get_list() have been rewritten in C.

  • env_poke() now supports zap() sentinels for removing bindings (#1012) and has better support for characters that are not representable in the local encoding.

  • env_poke() has been rewritten in C for performance.

  • The unicode translation warnings that appeared on Windows with R 4.0 are now fixed.

  • env_unbind(inherit = TRUE) now only removes a binding from the first parent environment that has a binding. It used to remove the bindings from the whole ancestry. The new behaviour doesn’t guarantee that a scope doesn’t have a binding but it is safer.

  • env_has() is now rewritten in C for performance.

  • dots_list() gains a .named argument for auto-naming dots (#957).

  • It is now possible to subset the .data pronoun with quosured symbols or strings (#807).

  • Expressions like quote(list("a b" = 1)) are now properly deparsed by expr_deparse() (#950).

  • parse_exprs() now preserves names (#808). When a single string produces multiple expressions, the names may be useful to figure out what input produced which expression.

  • parse_exprs() now supports empty expressions (#954).

  • list2(!!!x) no longer evaluates x multiple times (#981).

  • is_installed() now properly handles a pkg argument of length > 1. Before this it silently tested the first element of pkg only and thus always returned TRUE if the first package was installed regardless of the actual length of pkg. (#991, @salim-b)

  • arg_match0() is a faster version of arg_match() for use when performance is at a premium (#997, @krlmlr).

rlang 0.4.6

CRAN release: 2020-05-02

  • !!! now uses a combination of length(), names(), and [[ to splice S3 and S4 objects. This produces more consistent behaviour than as.list() on a wider variety of vector classes (#945, tidyverse/dplyr#4931).

rlang 0.4.5

CRAN release: 2020-03-01

  • set_names(), is_formula(), and names2() are now implemented in C for efficiency.

  • The .data pronoun now accepts symbol subscripts (#836).

  • Quosure lists now explicitly inherit from "list". This makes them compatible with the vctrs package (#928).

  • All rlang options are now documented in a centralised place, see ?rlang::faq-options (#899, @smingerson).

  • Fixed crash when env_bindings_are_lazy() gets improper arguments (#923).

  • arg_match() now detects and suggests possible typos in provided arguments (@jonkeane, #798).

  • arg_match() now gives an error if argument is of length greater than 1 and doesn’t exactly match the values input, similar to base match.arg (#914, @AliciaSchep)

rlang 0.4.4

CRAN release: 2020-01-28

  • Maintenance release for CRAN.

rlang 0.4.3

CRAN release: 2020-01-24

  • You can now use glue syntax to unquote on the LHS of :=. This syntax is automatically available in all functions taking dots with list2() and enquos(), and thus most of the tidyverse. Note that if you use the glue syntax in an R package, you need to import glue.

    A single pair of braces triggers normal glue interpolation:

    
    df <- data.frame(x = 1:3)
    
    suffix <- "foo"
    df %>% dplyr::mutate("var_{suffix}" := x * 2)
    #>   x var_foo
    #> 1 1       2
    #> 2 2       4
    #> 3 3       6

    Using a pair of double braces is for labelling a function argument. Technically, this is shortcut for "{as_label(enquo(arg))}". The syntax is similar to the curly-curly syntax for interpolating function arguments:

    
    my_wrapper <- function(data, var, suffix = "foo") {
      data %>% dplyr::mutate("{{ var }}_{suffix}" := {{ var }} * 2)
    }
    df %>% my_wrapper(x)
    #>   x x_foo
    #> 1 1     2
    #> 2 2     4
    #> 3 3     6
    
    df %>% my_wrapper(sqrt(x))
    #>   x sqrt(x)_foo
    #> 1 1    2.000000
    #> 2 2    2.828427
    #> 3 3    3.464102
  • Fixed a bug in magrittr backtraces that caused duplicate calls to appear in the trace.

  • Fixed a bug in magrittr backtraces that caused wrong call indices.

  • Empty backtraces are no longer shown when rlang_backtrace_on_error is set.

  • The tidy eval .env pronoun is now exported for documentation purposes.

  • warn() and abort() now check that either class or message was supplied. inform() allows sending empty message as it is occasionally useful for building user output incrementally.

  • flatten() fails with a proper error when input can’t be flattened (#868, #885).

  • inform() now consistently appends a final newline to the message (#880).

  • cnd_body.default() is now properly registered.

  • cnd_signal() now uses the same approach as abort() to save unhandled errors to last_error().

  • Parsable constants like NaN and NA_integer_ are now deparsed by expr_deparse() in their parsable form (#890).

  • Infix operators now stick to their LHS when deparsed by expr_deparse() (#890).

rlang 0.4.2

CRAN release: 2019-11-23

  • New cnd_header(), cnd_body() and cnd_footer() generics. These are automatically called by conditionMessage.rlang_error(), the default method for all rlang errors.

    Concretely, this is a way of breaking up lazy generation of error messages with conditionMessage() into three independent parts. This provides a lot of flexibility for hierarchies of error classes, for instance you could inherit the body of an error message from a parent class while overriding the header and footer.

  • The reminder to call last_error() is now less confusing thanks to a suggestion by @markhwhiteii.

  • The functions prefixed in scoped_ have been renamed to use the more conventional local_ prefix. For instance, scoped_bindings() is now local_bindings(). The scoped_ functions will be deprecated in the next significant version of rlang (0.5.0).

  • The .subclass argument of abort(), warn() and inform() has been renamed to class. This is for consistency with our conventions for class constructors documented in https://adv-r.hadley.nz/s3.html#s3-subclassing.

  • inform() now prints messages to the standard output by default in interactive sessions. This makes them appear more like normal output in IDEs such as RStudio. In non-interactive sessions, messages are still printed to standard error to make it easy to redirect messages when running R scripts (#852).

  • Fixed an error in trace_back() when the call stack contains a quosured symbol.

  • Backtrace is now displayed in full when an error occurs in non-interactive sessions. Previously the backtraces of parent errors were left out.

rlang 0.4.1

CRAN release: 2019-10-24

  • New experimental framework for creating bulleted error messages. See ?cnd_message for the motivation and an overwiew of the tools we have created to support this approach. In particular, abort() now takes character vectors to assemble a bullet list. Elements named x are prefixed with a red cross, elements named i are prefixed with a blue info symbol, and unnamed elements are prefixed with a bullet.

  • Capture of backtrace in the context of rethrowing an error from an exiting handler has been improved. The tryCatch() context no longer leaks in the high-level backtrace.

  • Printing an error no longer recommends calling last_trace(), unless called from last_error().

  • env_clone() no longer recreates active bindings and is now just an alias for env2list(as.list(env)). Unlike as.list() which returns the active binding function on R < 4.0, the value of active bindings is consistently used in all versions.

  • The display of rlang errors derived from parent errors has been improved. The simplified backtrace (as printed by rlang::last_error()) no longer includes the parent errors. On the other hand, the full backtrace (as printed by rlang::last_trace()) now includes the backtraces of the parent errors.

  • cnd_signal() has improved support for rlang errors created with error_cnd(). It now records a backtrace if there isn’t one already, and saves the error so it can be inspected with rlang::last_error().

  • rlang errors are no longer formatted and saved through conditionMessage(). This makes it easier to use a conditionMessage() method in subclasses created with abort(), which is useful to delay expensive generation of error messages until display time.

  • abort() can now be called without error message. This is useful when conditionMessage() is used to generate the message at print-time.

  • Fixed an infinite loop in eval_tidy(). It occurred when evaluating a quosure that inherits from the mask itself.

  • env_bind()’s performance has been significantly improved by fixing a bug that caused values to be repeatedly looked up by name.

  • cnd_muffle() now checks that a restart exists before invoking it. The restart might not exist if the condition is signalled with a different function (such as stop(warning_cnd)).

  • trace_length() returns the number of frames in a backtrace.

  • Added internal utility cnd_entrace() to add a backtrace to a condition.

  • rlang::last_error() backtraces are no longer displayed in red.

  • x %|% y now also works when y is of same length as x (@rcannood, #806).

  • Empty named lists are now deparsed more explicitly as "<named list>".

  • Fixed chr() bug causing it to return invisibly.

rlang 0.4.0

CRAN release: 2019-06-25

Tidy evaluation

Interpolate function inputs with the curly-curly operator

The main change of this release is the new tidy evaluation operator {{. This operator abstracts the quote-and-unquote idiom into a single interpolation step:

my_wrapper <- function(data, var, by) {
  data %>%
    group_by({{ by }}) %>%
    summarise(average = mean({{ var }}, na.rm = TRUE))
}

{{ var }} is a shortcut for !!enquo(var) that should be easier on the eyes, and easier to learn and teach.

Note that for multiple inputs, the existing documentation doesn’t stress enough that you can just pass dots straight to other tidy eval functions. There is no need for quote-and-unquote unless you need to modify the inputs or their names in some way:

my_wrapper <- function(data, var, ...) {
  data %>%
    group_by(...) %>%
    summarise(average = mean({{ var }}, na.rm = TRUE))
}

More robust .env pronoun

Another improvement to tidy evaluation should make it easier to use the .env pronoun. Starting from this release, subsetting an object from the .env pronoun now evaluates the corresponding symbol. This makes .env more robust, in particular in magrittr pipelines. The following example would previously fail:

foo <- 10
mtcars %>% mutate(cyl = cyl * .env$foo)

This way, using the .env pronoun is now equivalent to unquoting a constant objects, but with an easier syntax:

mtcars %>% mutate(cyl = cyl * !!foo)

Note that following this change, and despite its name, .env is no longer referring to a bare environment. Instead, it is a special shortcut with its own rules. Similarly, the .data pronoun is not really a data frame.

New functions and features

  • New pairlist2() function with splicing support. It preserves missing arguments, which makes it useful for lists of formal parameters for functions.

  • is_bool() is a scalar type predicate that checks whether its input is a single TRUE or FALSE. Like is_string(), it returns FALSE when the input is missing. This is useful for type-checking function arguments (#695).

  • is_string() gains a string argument. is_string(x, "foo") is a shortcut for is_character(x) && length(x) == 1 && identical(x, "foo").

  • Lists of quosures now have pillar methods for display in tibbles.

  • set_names() now names unnamed input vectors before applying a function. The following expressions are now equivalent:

    letters %>% set_names() %>% set_names(toupper)
    
    letters %>% set_names(toupper)
  • You can now pass a character vector as message argument for abort(), warn(), inform(), and signal(). The vector is collapsed to a single string with a "\n" newline separating each element of the input vector (#744).

  • maybe_missing() gains a default argument.

  • New functions for weak references: new_weakref(), weakref_key(), weakref_value(), and is_weakref() (@wch, #787).

Performance

  • The performance of exec() has been improved. It is now on the same order of performance as do.call(), though slightly slower.

  • call2() now uses the new pairlist2() function internally. This considerably improves its performance. This also means it now preserves empty arguments:

    call2("fn", 1, , foo = )
    #> fn(1, , foo = )

Bugfixes and small improvements

  • with_handlers() now installs calling handlers first on the stack, no matter their location in the argument list. This way they always take precedence over exiting handlers, which ensures their side effects (such as logging) take place (#718).

  • In rlang backtraces, the global:: prefix is now only added when the function directly inherits from the global environment. Functions inheriting indirectly no longer have a namespace qualifier (#733).

  • options(error = rlang::entrace) now has better support for errors thrown from C (#779). It also saves structured errors in the error field of rlang::last_error().

  • ns_env() and ns_env_name() (experimental functions) now support functions and environments consisently. They also require an argument from now on.

  • is_interactive() is aware of the TESTTHAT environment variable and returns FALSE when it is "true" (@jennybc, #738).

  • fn_fmls() and variants no longer coerce their input to a closure. Instead, they throw an error.

  • Fixed an issue in knitr that caused backtraces to print even when error = TRUE.

  • The return object from as_function() now inherits from "function" (@richierocks, #735).

Lifecycle

We commit to support 5 versions of R. As R 3.6 is about to be released, rlang now requires R 3.2 or greater. We’re also continuing our efforts to streamline and narrow the rlang API.

  • modify() and prepend() (two experimental functions marked as in the questioning stage since rlang 0.3.0) are now deprecated. Vector functions are now out of scope for rlang. They might be revived in the vctrs or funs packages.

  • exiting() is soft-deprecated because with_handlers() treats handlers as exiting by default.

  • The vector constructors like lgl() or new_logical() are now in the questioning stage. They are likely to be moved to the vctrs package at some point. Same for the missing values shortcuts like na_lgl.

  • as_logical(), as_integer(), etc have been soft-deprecated in favour of vctrs::vec_cast().

  • type_of(), switch_type(), coerce_type(), and friends are soft-deprecated.

  • The encoding and locale API was summarily archived. This API didn’t bring any value and wasn’t used on CRAN.

  • lang_type_of(), switch_lang(), and coerce_lang() were archived. These functions were not used on CRAN or internally.

  • Subsetting quosures with [ or [[ is soft-deprecated.

  • All functions that were soft-deprecated, deprecated, or defunct in previous releases have been bumped to the next lifecycle stage.

rlang 0.3.2

CRAN release: 2019-03-21

  • Fixed protection issue reported by rchk.

  • The experimental option rlang__backtrace_on_error is no longer experimental and has been renamed to rlang_backtrace_on_error.

  • New “none” option for rlang_backtrace_on_error.

  • Unary operators applied to quosures now give better error messages.

  • Fixed issue with backtraces of warnings promoted to error, and entraced via withCallingHandlers(). The issue didn’t affect entracing via top level options(error = rlang::entrace) handling.

rlang 0.3.1

CRAN release: 2019-01-08

This patch release polishes the new backtrace feature introduced in rlang 0.3.0 and solves bugs for the upcoming release of purrr 0.3.0. It also features as_label() and as_name() which are meant to replace quo_name() in the future. Finally, a bunch of deparsing issues have been fixed.

Backtrace fixes

  • New entrace() condition handler. Add this to your RProfile to enable rlang backtraces for all errors, including warnings promoted to errors:

    
    if (requireNamespace("rlang", quietly = TRUE)) {
      options(error = rlang::entrace)
    }

    This handler also works as a calling handler:

    
    with_handlers(
      error = calling(entrace),
      foo(bar)
    )

    However it’s often more practical to use with_abort() in that case:

    
    with_abort(foo(bar))
  • with_abort() gains a classes argument to promote any kind of condition to an rlang error.

  • New last_trace() shortcut to print the backtrace stored in the last_error().

  • Backtrace objects now print in full by default.

  • Calls in backtraces are now numbered according to their position in the call tree. The numbering is non-contiguous for simplified backtraces because of omitted call frames.

  • catch_cnd() gains a classes argument to specify which classes of condition to catch. It returns NULL if the expected condition could not be caught (#696).

as_label() and as_name()

The new as_label() and as_name() functions should be used instead of quo_name() to transform objects and quoted expressions to a string. We have noticed that tidy eval users often use quo_name() to extract names from quosured symbols. This is not a good use for that function because the way quo_name() creates a string is not a well defined operation.

For this reason, we are replacing quo_name() with two new functions that have more clearly defined purposes, and hopefully better names reflecting those purposes. Use as_label() to transform any object to a short human-readable description, and as_name() to extract names from (possibly quosured) symbols.

Create labels with as_label() to:

  • Display an object in a concise way, for example to labellise axes in a graphical plot.

  • Give default names to columns in a data frame. In this case, labelling is the first step before name repair.

We expect as_label() to gain additional parameters in the future, for example to control the maximum width of a label. The way an object is labelled is thus subject to change.

On the other hand, as_name() transforms symbols back to a string in a well defined manner. Unlike as_label(), as_name() guarantees the roundtrip symbol -> string -> symbol.

In general, if you don’t know for sure what kind of object you’re dealing with (a call, a symbol, an unquoted constant), use as_label() and make no assumption about the resulting string. If you know you have a symbol and need the name of the object it refers to, use as_name(). For instance, use as_label() with objects captured with enquo() and as_name() with symbols captured with ensym().

Note that quo_name() will only be soft-deprecated at the next major version of rlang (0.4.0). At this point, it will start issuing once-per-session warnings in scripts, but not in packages. It will then be deprecated in yet another major version, at which point it will issue once-per-session warnings in packages as well. You thus have plenty of time to change your code.

Minor fixes and features

  • New is_interactive() function. It serves the same purpose as base::interactive() but also checks if knitr is in progress and provides an escape hatch. Use with_interactive() and scoped_interactive() to override the return value of is_interactive(). This is useful in unit tests or to manually turn on interactive features in RMarkdown outputs

  • calling() now boxes its argument.

  • New done() function to box a value. Done boxes are sentinels to indicate early termination of a loop or computation. For instance, it will be used in the purrr package to allow users to shortcircuit a reduction or accumulation.

  • new_box() now accepts additional attributes passed to structure().

  • Fixed a quotation bug with binary operators of zero or one argument such as `/`(1) (#652). They are now deparsed and printed properly as well.

  • New call_ns() function to retrieve the namespace of a call. Returns NULL if the call is not namespaced.

  • Top-level S3 objects are now deparsed properly.

  • Empty { blocks are now deparsed on the same line.

  • Fixed a deparsing issue with symbols containing non-ASCII characters (#691).

  • expr_print() now handles [ and [[ operators correctly, and deparses non-syntactic symbols with backticks.

  • call_modify() now respects ordering of unnamed inputs. Before this fix, it would move all unnamed inputs after named ones.

  • as_closure() wrappers now call primitives with positional arguments to avoid edge case issues of argument matching.

  • as_closure() wrappers now dispatch properly on methods defined in the global environment (tidyverse/purrr#459).

  • as_closure() now supports both base-style (e1 and e2) and purrr-style (.x and .y) arguments with binary primitives.

  • exec() takes .fn as first argument instead of f, for consistency with other rlang functions.

  • Fixed infinite loop with quosures created inside a data mask.

  • Base errors set as parent of rlang errors are now printed correctly.

rlang 0.3.0

CRAN release: 2018-10-22

Breaking changes

The rlang API is still maturing. In this section, you’ll find hard breaking changes. See the life cycle section below for an exhaustive list of API changes.

  • quo_text() now deparses non-syntactic symbols with backticks:

    quo_text(sym("foo+"))
    #> [1] "`foo+`"

    This caused a number of issues in reverse dependencies as quo_text() tends to be used for converting symbols to strings. quo_text() and quo_name() should not be used for this purpose because they are general purpose deparsers. These functions should generally only be used for printing outputs or creating default labels. If you need to convert symbols to strings, please use as_string() rather than quo_text().

    We have extended the documentation of ?quo_text and ?quo_name to make these points clearer.

  • exprs() no longer flattens quosures. exprs(!!!quos(x, y)) is now equivalent to quos(x, y).

  • The sentinel for removing arguments in call_modify() has been changed from NULL to zap(). This breaking change is motivated by the ambiguity of NULL with valid argument values.

    
    call_modify(call, arg = NULL)  # Add `arg = NULL` to the call
    call_modify(call, arg = zap()) # Remove the `arg` argument from the call
  • The %@% operator now quotes its input and supports S4 objects. This makes it directly equivalent to @ except that it extracts attributes for non-S4 objects (#207).

  • Taking the env_parent() of the empty environment is now an error.

Summary

The changes for this version are organised around three main themes: error reporting, tidy eval, and tidy dots.

  • abort() now records backtraces automatically in the error object. Errors thrown with abort() invite users to call rlang::last_error() to see a backtrace and help identifying where and why the error occurred. The backtraces created by rlang (you can create one manually with trace_back()) are printed in a simplified form by default that removes implementation details from the backtrace. To see the full backtrace, call summary(rlang::last_error()).

    abort() also gains a parent argument. This is meant for situations where you’re calling a low level API (to download a file, parse a JSON file, etc) and would like to intercept errors with base::tryCatch() or rlang::with_handlers() and rethrow them with a high-level message. Call abort() with the intercepted error as the parent argument. When the user prints rlang::last_error(), the backtrace will be shown in two sections corresponding to the high-level and low-level contexts.

    In order to get segmented backtraces, the low-level error has to be thrown with abort(). When that’s not the case, you can call the low-level function within with_abort() to automatically promote all errors to rlang errors.

  • The tidy eval changes are mostly for developers of data masking APIs. The main user-facing change is that .data[[ is now an unquote operator so that var in .data[[var]] is never masked by data frame columns and always picked from the environment. This makes the pronoun safe for programming in functions.

  • The !!! operator now supports all classed objects like factors. It calls as.list() on S3 objects and as(x, "list") on S4 objects.

  • dots_list() gains several arguments to control how dots are collected. You can control the selection of arguments with the same name with .homonyms (keep first, last, all, or abort). You can also elect to preserve empty arguments with .preserve_empty.

Conditions and errors

  • New trace_back() captures a backtrace. Compared to the base R traceback, it contains additional structure about the relationship between frames. It comes with tools for automatically restricting to frames after a certain environment on the stack, and to simplify when printing. These backtraces are now recorded in errors thrown by abort() (see below).

  • abort() gains a parent argument to specify a parent error. This is meant for situations where a low-level error is expected (e.g. download or parsing failed) and you’d like to throw an error with higher level information. Specifying the low-level error as parent makes it possible to partition the backtraces based on ancestry.

  • Errors thrown with abort() now embed a backtrace in the condition object. It is no longer necessary to record a trace with a calling handler for such errors.

  • with_abort() runs expressions in a context where all errors are promoted to rlang errors and gain a backtrace.

  • Unhandled errors thrown by abort() are now automatically saved and can be retrieved with rlang::last_error(). The error prints with a simplified backtrace. Call summary(last_error()) to see the full backtrace.

  • New experimental option rlang__backtrace_on_error to display backtraces alongside error messages. See ?rlang::abort for supported options.

  • The new signal() function completes the abort(), warn() and inform() family. It creates and signals a bare condition.

  • New interrupt() function to simulate an user interrupt from R code.

  • cnd_signal() now dispatches messages, warnings, errors and interrupts to the relevant signalling functions (message(), warning(), stop() and the C function Rf_onintr()). This makes it a good choice to resignal a captured condition.

  • New cnd_type() helper to determine the type of a condition ("condition", "message", "warning", "error" or "interrupt").

  • abort(), warn() and inform() now accepts metadata with .... The data are stored in the condition and can be examined by user handlers.

    Consequently all arguments have been renamed and prefixed with a dot (to limit naming conflicts between arguments and metadata names).

  • with_handlers() treats bare functions as exiting handlers (equivalent to handlers supplied to tryCatch()). It also supports the formula shortcut for lambda functions (as in purrr).

  • with_handlers() now produces a cleaner stack trace.

Tidy dots

  • The input types of !!! have been standardised. !!! is generally defined on vectors: it takes a vector (typically, a list) and unquotes each element as a separate argument. The standardisation makes !!! behave the same in functions taking dots with list2() and in quoting functions. !!! accepts these types:

    • Lists, pairlists, and atomic vectors. If they have a class, they are converted with base::as.list() to allow S3 dispatch. Following this change, objects like factors can now be spliced without data loss.

    • S4 objects. These are converted with as(obj, "list") before splicing.

    • Quoted blocks of expressions, i.e. { } calls

    !!! disallows:

    • Any other objects like functions or environments, but also language objects like formula, symbols, or quosures.

    Quoting functions used to automatically wrap language objects in lists to make them spliceable. This behaviour is now soft-deprecated and it is no longer valid to write !!!enquo(x). Please unquote scalar objects with !! instead.

  • dots_list(), enexprs() and enquos() gain a .homonyms argument to control how to treat arguments with the same name. The default is to keep them. Set it to "first" or "last" to keep only the first or last occurrences. Set it to "error" to raise an informative error about the arguments with duplicated names.

  • enexprs() and enquos() now support .ignore_empty = "all" with named arguments as well (#414).

  • dots_list() gains a .preserve_empty argument. When TRUE, empty arguments are stored as missing arguments (see ?missing_arg).

  • dots_list(), enexprs() and enquos() gain a .check_assign argument. When TRUE, a warning is issued when a <- call is detected in .... No warning is issued if the assignment is wrapped in brackets like { a <- 1 }. The warning lets users know about a possible typo in their code (assigning instead of matching a function parameter) and requires them to be explicit that they really want to assign to a variable by wrapping in parentheses.

  • lapply(list(quote(foo)), list2) no longer evaluates foo (#580).

Tidy eval

  • You can now unquote quosured symbols as LHS of :=. The symbol is automatically unwrapped from the quosure.

  • Quosure methods have been defined for common operations like ==. These methods fail with an informative error message suggesting to unquote the quosure (#478, #tidyverse/dplyr#3476).

  • as_data_pronoun() now accepts data masks. If the mask has multiple environments, all of these are looked up when subsetting the pronoun. Function objects stored in the mask are bypassed.

  • It is now possible to unquote strings in function position. This is consistent with how the R parser coerces strings to symbols. These two expressions are now equivalent: expr("foo"()) and expr((!!"foo")()).

  • Quosures converted to functions with as_function() now support nested quosures.

  • expr_deparse() (used to print quosures at the console) now escapes special characters. For instance, newlines now print as "\n" (#484). This ensures that the roundtrip parse_expr(expr_deparse(x)) is not lossy.

  • new_data_mask() now throws an error when bottom is not a child of top (#551).

  • Formulas are now evaluated in the correct environment within eval_tidy(). This fixes issues in dplyr and other tidy-evaluation interfaces.

  • New functions new_quosures() and as_quosures() to create or coerce to a list of quosures. This is a small S3 class that ensures two invariants on subsetting and concatenation: that each element is a quosure and that the list is always named even if only with a vector of empty strings.

Environments

  • env() now treats a single unnamed argument as the parent of the new environment. Consequently, child_env() is now superfluous and is now in questioning life cycle.

  • New current_env() and current_fn() functions to retrieve the current environment or the function being evaluated. They are equivalent to base::environment() and base::sys.function() called without argument.

  • env_get() and env_get_list() gain a default argument to provide a default value for non-existing bindings.

  • env_poke() now returns the old value invisibly rather than the input environment.

  • The new function env_name() returns the name of an environment. It always adds the “namespace:” prefix to namespace names. It returns “global” instead of “.GlobalEnv” or “R_GlobalEnv”, “empty” instead of “R_EmptyEnv”. The companion env_label() is like env_name() but returns the memory address for anonymous environments.

  • env_parents() now returns a named list. The names are taken with env_name().

  • env_parents() and env_tail() now stop at the global environment by default. This can be changed with the last argument. The empty environment is always a stopping condition so you can take the parents or the tail of an environment on the search path without changing the default.

  • New predicates env_binding_are_active() and env_binding_are_lazy() detect the kind of bindings in an environment.

  • env_binding_lock() and env_binding_unlock() allows to lock and unlock multiple bindings. The predicate env_binding_are_locked() tests if bindings are locked.

  • env_lock() and env_is_locked() lock an environment or test if an environment is locked.

  • env_print() pretty-prints environments. It shows the contents (up to 20 elements) and the properties of the environment.

  • is_scoped() has been soft-deprecated and renamed to is_attached(). It now supports environments in addition to search names.

  • env_bind_lazy() and env_bind_active() now support quosures.

  • env_bind_exprs() and env_bind_fns() are soft-deprecated and renamed to env_bind_lazy() and env_bind_active() for clarity and consistency.

  • env_bind(), env_bind_exprs(), and env_bind_fns() now return the list of old binding values (or missing arguments when there is no old value). This makes it easy to restore the original environment state:

    old <- env_bind(env, foo = "foo", bar = "bar")
    env_bind(env, !!!old)
  • env_bind() now supports binding missing arguments and removing bindings with zap sentinels. env_bind(env, foo = ) binds a missing argument and env_bind(env, foo = zap()) removes the foo binding.

  • The inherit argument of env_get() and env_get_list() has changed position. It now comes after default.

  • scoped_bindings() and with_bindings() can now be called without bindings.

  • env_clone() now recreates active bindings correctly.

  • env_get() now evaluates promises and active bindings since these are internal objects which should not be exposed at the R level (#554)

  • env_print() calls get_env() on its argument, making it easier to see the environment of closures and quosures (#567).

  • env_get() now supports retrieving missing arguments when inherit is FALSE.

Calls

  • is_call() now accepts multiple namespaces. For instance is_call(x, "list", ns = c("", "base")) will match if x is list() or if it’s base::list():

  • call_modify() has better support for ... and now treats it like a named argument. call_modify(call, ... = ) adds ... to the call and call_modify(call, ... = NULL) removes it.

  • call_modify() now preserves empty arguments. It is no longer necessary to use missing_arg() to add a missing argument to a call. This is possible thanks to the new .preserve_empty option of dots_list().

  • call_modify() now supports removing unexisting arguments (#393) and passing multiple arguments with the same name (#398). The new .homonyms argument controls how to treat these arguments.

  • call_standardise() now handles primitive functions like ~ properly (#473).

  • call_print_type() indicates how a call is deparsed and printed at the console by R: prefix, infix, and special form.

  • The call_ functions such as call_modify() now correctly check that their input is the right type (#187).

Other improvements and fixes

Lifecycle

Soft-deprecated functions and arguments

rlang 0.3.0 introduces a new warning mechanism for soft-deprecated functions and arguments. A warning is issued, but only under one of these circumstances:

  • rlang has been attached with a library() call.
  • The deprecated function has been called from the global environment.

In addition, deprecation warnings appear only once per session in order to not be disruptive.

Deprecation warnings shouldn’t make R CMD check fail for packages using testthat. However, expect_silent() can transform the warning to a hard failure.

tidyeval
  • .data[[foo]] is now an unquote operator. This guarantees that foo is evaluated in the context rather than the data mask and makes it easier to treat .data[["bar"]] the same way as a symbol. For instance, this will help ensuring that group_by(df, .data[["name"]]) and group_by(df, name) produce the same column name.

  • Automatic naming of expressions now uses a new deparser (still unexported) instead of quo_text(). Following this change, automatic naming is now compatible with all object types (via pillar::type_sum() if available), prevents multi-line names, and ensures name and .data[["name"]] are given the same default name.

  • Supplying a name with !!! calls is soft-deprecated. This name is ignored because only the names of the spliced vector are applied.

  • Quosure lists returned by quos() and enquos() now have “list-of” behaviour: the types of new elements are checked when adding objects to the list. Consequently, assigning non-quosure objects to quosure lists is now soft-deprecated. Please coerce to a bare list with as.list() beforehand.

  • as_quosure() now requires an explicit environment for symbols and calls. This should typically be the environment in which the expression was created.

  • names() and length() methods for data pronouns are deprecated. It is no longer valid to write names(.data) or length(.data).

  • Using as.character() on quosures is soft-deprecated (#523).

Miscellaneous

Deprecated functions and arguments

Deprecated functions and arguments issue a warning inconditionally, but only once per session.

  • Calling UQ() and UQS() with the rlang namespace qualifier is deprecated as of rlang 0.3.0. Just use the unqualified forms instead:

    # Bad
    rlang::expr(mean(rlang::UQ(var) * 100))
    
    # Ok
    rlang::expr(mean(UQ(var) * 100))
    
    # Good
    rlang::expr(mean(!!var * 100))

    Although soft-deprecated since rlang 0.2.0, UQ() and UQS() can still be used for now.

  • The call argument of abort() and condition constructors is now deprecated in favour of storing full backtraces.

  • The .standardise argument of call_modify() is deprecated. Please use call_standardise() beforehand.

  • The sentinel argument of env_tail() has been deprecated and renamed to last.

Defunct functions and arguments

Defunct functions and arguments throw an error when used.

  • as_dictionary() is now defunct.

  • The experimental function rst_muffle() is now defunct. Please use cnd_muffle() instead. Unlike its predecessor, cnd_muffle() is not generic. It is marked as a calling handler and thus can be passed directly to with_handlers() to muffle specific conditions (such as specific subclasses of warnings).

  • cnd_inform(), cnd_warn() and cnd_abort() are retired and defunct. The old cnd_message(), cnd_warning(), cnd_error() and new_cnd() constructors deprecated in rlang 0.2.0 are now defunct.

  • Modifying a condition with cnd_signal() is defunct. In addition, creating a condition with cnd_signal() is soft-deprecated, please use the new function [signal()] instead.

  • inplace() has been renamed to calling() to follow base R terminology more closely.

Functions and arguments in the questioning stage

We are no longer convinced these functions are the right approach but we do not have a precise alternative yet.

  • The functions from the restart API are now in the questioning lifecycle stage. It is not clear yet whether we want to recommend restarts as a style of programming in R.

  • prepend() and modify() are in the questioning stage, as well as as_logical(), as_character(), etc. We are still figuring out what vector tools belong in rlang.

  • flatten(), squash() and their atomic variants are now in the questioning lifecycle stage. They have slightly different semantics than the flattening functions in purrr and we are currently rethinking our approach to flattening with the new typing facilities of the vctrs package.

rlang 0.2.2

CRAN release: 2018-08-16

This is a maintenance release that fixes several garbage collection protection issues.

rlang 0.2.1

CRAN release: 2018-05-30

This is a maintenance release that fixes several tidy evaluation issues.

  • Functions with tidy dots support now allow splicing atomic vectors.

  • Quosures no longer capture the current srcref.

  • Formulas are now evaluated in the correct environment by eval_tidy(). This fixes issues in dplyr and other tidy-evaluation interfaces.

rlang 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2018-02-20

This release of rlang is mostly an effort at polishing the tidy evaluation framework. All tidy eval functions and operators have been rewritten in C in order to improve performance. Capture of expression, quasiquotation, and evaluation of quosures are now vastly faster. On the UI side, many of the inconveniences that affected the first release of rlang have been solved:

  • The !! operator now has the precedence of unary + and - which allows a much more natural syntax: !!a > b only unquotes a rather than the whole a > b expression.

  • enquo() works in magrittr pipes: mtcars %>% select(!!enquo(var)).

  • enquos() is a variant of quos() that has a more natural interface for capturing multiple arguments and ....

See the first section below for a complete list of changes to the tidy evaluation framework.

This release also polishes the rlang API. Many functions have been renamed as we get a better feel for the consistency and clarity of the API. Note that rlang as a whole is still maturing and some functions are even experimental. In order to make things clearer for users of rlang, we have started to develop a set of conventions to document the current stability of each function. You will now find “lifecycle” sections in documentation topics. In addition we have gathered all lifecycle information in the ?rlang::lifecycle help page. Please only use functions marked as stable in your projects unless you are prepared to deal with occasional backward incompatible updates.

Tidy evaluation

  • The backend for quos(), exprs(), list2(), dots_list(), etc is now written in C. This greatly improve the performance of dots capture, especially with the splicing operator !!! which now scales much better (you’ll see a 1000x performance gain in some cases). The unquoting algorithm has also been improved which makes enexpr() and enquo() more efficient as well.

  • The tidy eval !! operator now binds tightly. You no longer have to wrap it in parentheses, i.e. !!x > y will only unquote x.

    Technically the !! operator has the same precedence as unary - and +. This means that !!a:b and !!a + b are equivalent to (!!a):b and (!!a) + b. On the other hand !!a^b and !!a$b are equivalent to!!(a^b) and !!(a$b).

  • The print method for quosures has been greatly improved. Quosures no longer appear as formulas but as expressions prefixed with ^; quosures are colourised according to their environment; unquoted objects are displayed between angular brackets instead of code (i.e. an unquoted integer vector is shown as <int: 1, 2> rather than 1:2); unquoted S3 objects are displayed using pillar::type_sum() if available.

  • New enquos() function to capture arguments. It treats ... the same way as quos() but can also capture named arguments just like enquo(), i.e. one level up. By comparison quos(arg) only captures the name arg rather than the expression supplied to the arg argument.

    In addition, enexprs() is like enquos() but like exprs() it returns bare expressions. And ensyms() expects strings or symbols.

  • It is now possible to use enquo() within a magrittr pipe:

    select_one <- function(df, var) {
      df %>% dplyr::select(!!enquo(var))
    }

    Technically, this is because enquo() now also captures arguments in parents of the current environment rather than just in the current environment. The flip side of this increased flexibility is that if you made a typo in the name of the variable you want to capture, and if an object of that name exists anywhere in the parent contexts, you will capture that object rather than getting an error.

  • quo_expr() has been renamed to quo_squash() in order to better reflect that it is a lossy operation that flattens all nested quosures.

  • !!! now accepts any kind of objects for consistency. Scalar types are treated as vectors of length 1. Previously only symbolic objects like symbols and calls were treated as such.

  • ensym() is a new variant of enexpr() that expects a symbol or a string and always returns a symbol. If a complex expression is supplied it fails with an error.

  • exprs() and quos() gain a .unquote_names arguments to switch off interpretation of := as a name operator. This should be useful for programming on the language targetting APIs such as data.table.

  • exprs() gains a .named option to auto-label its arguments (#267).

  • Functions taking dots by value rather than by expression (e.g. regular functions, not quoting functions) have a more restricted set of unquoting operations. They only support := and !!!, and only at top-level. I.e. dots_list(!!! x) is valid but not dots_list(nested_call(!!! x)) (#217).

  • Functions taking dots with list2() or dots_list() now support splicing of NULL values. !!! NULL is equivalent to !!! list() (#242).

  • Capture operators now support evaluated arguments. Capturing a forced or evaluated argument is exactly the same as unquoting that argument: the actual object (even if a vector) is inlined in the expression. Capturing a forced argument occurs when you use enquo(), enexpr(), etc too late. It also happens when your quoting function is supplied to lapply() or when you try to quote the first argument of an S3 method (which is necessarily evaluated in order to detect which class to dispatch to). (#295, #300).

  • Parentheses around !! are automatically removed. This makes the generated expression call cleaner: (!! sym("name"))(arg). Note that removing the parentheses will never affect the actual precedence within the expression as the parentheses are only useful when parsing code as text. The parentheses will also be added by R when printing code if needed (#296).

  • Quasiquotation now supports !! and !!! as functional forms:

    expr(`!!`(var))
    quo(call(`!!!`(var)))

    This is consistent with the way native R operators parses to function calls. These new functional forms are to be preferred to UQ() and UQS(). We are now questioning the latter and might deprecate them in a future release.

  • The quasiquotation parser now gives meaningful errors in corner cases to help you figure out what is wrong.

  • New getters and setters for quosures: quo_get_expr(), quo_get_env(), quo_set_expr(), and quo_set_env(). Compared to get_expr() etc, these accessors only work on quosures and are slightly more efficient.

  • quo_is_symbol() and quo_is_call() now take the same set of arguments as is_symbol() and is_call().

  • enquo() and enexpr() now deal with default values correctly (#201).

  • Splicing a list no longer mutates it (#280).

Conditions

  • The new functions cnd_warn() and cnd_inform() transform conditions to warnings or messages before signalling them.

  • cnd_signal() now returns invisibly.

  • cnd_signal() and cnd_abort() now accept character vectors to create typed conditions with several S3 subclasses.

  • is_condition() is now properly exported.

  • Condition signallers such as cnd_signal() and abort() now accept a call depth as call arguments. This allows plucking a call from further up the call stack (#30).

  • New helper catch_cnd(). This is a small wrapper around tryCatch() that captures and returns any signalled condition. It returns NULL if none was signalled.

  • cnd_abort() now adds the correct S3 classes for error conditions. This fixes error catching, for instance by testthat::expect_error().

Environments

Various features

  • New functions inherits_any(), inherits_all(), and inherits_only(). They allow testing for inheritance from multiple classes. The _any variant is equivalent to base::inherits() but is more explicit about its behaviour. inherits_all() checks that all classes are present in order and inherits_only() checks that the class vectors are identical.

  • New fn_fmls<- and fn_fmls_names<- setters.

  • New function experimental function chr_unserialise_unicode() for turning characters serialised to unicode point form (e.g. <U+xxxx>) to UTF-8. In addition, as_utf8_character() now translates those as well. (@krlmlr)

  • expr_label() now supports quoted function definition calls (#275).

  • call_modify() and call_standardise() gain an argument to specify an environment. The call definition is looked up in that environment when the call to modify or standardise is not wrapped in a quosure.

  • is_symbol() gains a name argument to check that that the symbol name matches a string (#287).

  • New rlang_box class. Its purpose is similar to the AsIs class from base::I(), i.e. it protects a value temporarily. However it does so by wrapping the value in a scalar list. Use new_box() to create a boxed value, is_box() to test for a boxed value, and unbox() to unbox it. new_box() and is_box() accept optional subclass.

  • The vector constructors such as new_integer(), new_double_along() etc gain a names argument. In the case of the _along family it defaults to the names of the input vector.

Bugfixes

  • When nested quosures are evaluated with eval_tidy(), the .env pronoun now correctly refers to the current quosure under evaluation (#174). Previously it would always refer to the environment of the outermost quosure.

  • as_pairlist() (part of the experimental API) now supports NULL and objects of type pairlist (#397).

  • Fixed a performance bug in set_names() that caused a full copy of the vector names (@jimhester, #366).

API changes

The rlang API is maturing and still in flux. However we have made an effort to better communicate what parts are stable. We will not introduce breaking changes for stable functions unless the payoff for the change is worth the trouble. See ?rlang::lifecycle for the lifecycle status of exported functions.

  • The particle “lang” has been renamed to “call”:

    • lang() has been renamed to call2().
    • new_language() has ben renamed to new_call().
    • is_lang() has been renamed to is_call(). We haven’t replaced the is_unary_lang() and is_binary_lang() because they are redundant with the n argument of is_call().
    • All call accessors such as lang_fn(), lang_name(), lang_args() etc are soft-deprecated and renamed with call_ prefix.

    In rlang 0.1 calls were called “language” objects in order to follow the R type nomenclature as returned by base::typeof(). We wanted to avoid adding to the confusion between S modes and R types. With hindsight we find it is better to use more meaningful type names.

  • We now use the term “data mask” instead of “overscope”. We think data mask is a more natural name in the context of R. We say that that objects from user data mask objects in the current environment. This makes reference to object masking in the search path which is due to the same mechanism (in technical terms, lexical scoping with hierarchically nested environments).

    Following this new terminology, the new functions as_data_mask() and new_data_mask() replace as_overscope() and new_overscope(). as_data_mask() has also a more consistent interface. These functions are only meant for developers of tidy evaluation interfaces.

  • We no longer require a data mask (previously called overscope) to be cleaned up after evaluation. overscope_clean() is thus soft-deprecated without replacement.

Breaking changes

  • !! now binds tightly in order to match intuitive parsing of tidy eval code, e.g. !! x > y is now equivalent to (!! x) > y. A corollary of this new syntax is that you now have to be explicit when you want to unquote the whole expression on the right of !!. For instance you have to explicitly write !! (x > y) to unquote x > y rather than just x.

  • UQ(), UQS() and := now issue an error when called directly. The previous definitions caused surprising results when the operators were invoked in wrong places (i.e. not in quasiquoted arguments).

  • The prefix form `!!`() is now an alias to !! rather than UQE(). This makes it more in line with regular R syntax where operators are parsed as regular calls, e.g. a + b is parsed as `+`(a, b) and both forms are completely equivalent. Also the prefix form `!!!`() is now equivalent to !!!.

  • UQE() is now deprecated in order to simplify the syntax of quasiquotation. Please use !! get_expr(x) instead.

  • expr_interp() now returns a formula instead of a quosure when supplied a formula.

  • is_quosureish() and as_quosureish() are deprecated. These functions assumed that quosures are formulas but that is only an implementation detail.

  • new_cnd() is now cnd() for consistency with other constructors. Also, cnd_error(), cnd_warning() and cnd_message() are now error_cnd(), warning_cnd() and message_cnd() to follow our naming scheme according to which the type of output is a suffix rather than a prefix.

  • is_node() now returns TRUE for calls as well and is_pairlist() does not return TRUE for NULL objects. Use is_node_list() to determine whether an object either of type pairlist or NULL. Note that all these functions are still experimental.

  • set_names() no longer automatically splices lists of character vectors as we are moving away from automatic splicing semantics.

Upcoming breaking changes

  • Calling the functional forms of unquote operators with the rlang namespace qualifier is soft-deprecated. UQ() and UQS() are not function calls so it does not make sense to namespace them. Supporting namespace qualifiers complicates the implementation of unquotation and is misleading as to the nature of unquoting (which are syntactic operators at quotation-time rather than function calls at evaluation-time).

  • We are now questioning UQ() and UQS() as functional forms of !!. If !! and !!! were native R operators, they would parse to the functional calls `!!`() and `!!!`(). This is now the preferred way to unquote with a function call rather than with the operators. We haven’t decided yet whether we will deprecate UQ() and UQS() in the future. In any case we recommend using the new functional forms.

  • parse_quosure() and parse_quosures() are soft-deprecated in favour of parse_quo() and parse_quos(). These new names are consistent with the rule that abbreviated suffixes indicate the return type of a function. In addition the new functions require their callers to explicitly supply an environment for the quosures.

  • Using f_rhs() and f_env() on quosures is soft-deprecated. The fact that quosures are formulas is an implementation detail that might change in the future. Please use quo_get_expr() and quo_get_env() instead.

  • quo_expr() is soft-deprecated in favour of quo_squash(). quo_expr() was a misnomer because it implied that it was a mere expression acccessor for quosures whereas it was really a lossy operation that squashed all nested quosures.

  • With the renaming of the lang particle to call, all these functions are soft-deprecated: lang(), is_lang(), lang_fn(), lang_name(), lang_args().

    In addition, lang_head() and lang_tail() are soft-deprecated without replacement because these are low level accessors that are rarely needed.

  • as_overscope() is soft-deprecated in favour of as_data_mask().

  • The node setters were renamed from mut_node_ prefix to node_poke_. This change follows a new naming convention in rlang where mutation is referred to as “poking”.

  • splice() is now in questioning stage as it is not needed given the !!! operator works in functions taking dots with dots_list().

  • lgl_len(), int_len() etc have been soft-deprecated and renamed with new_ prefix, e.g. new_logical() and new_integer(). This is for consistency with other non-variadic object constructors.

  • ll() is now an alias to list2(). This is consistent with the new call2() constructor for calls. list2() and call2() are versions of list() and call() that support splicing of lists with !!!. ll() remains around as a shorthand for users who like its conciseness.

  • Automatic splicing of lists in vector constructors (e.g. lgl(), chr(), etc) is now soft-deprecated. Please be explicit with the splicing operator !!!.

rlang 0.1.6

CRAN release: 2017-12-21

  • This is a maintenance release in anticipation of a forthcoming change to R’s C API (use MARK_NOT_MUTABLE() instead of SET_NAMED()).

  • New function is_reference() to check whether two objects are one and the same.

rlang 0.1.4

CRAN release: 2017-11-05

  • eval_tidy() no longer maps over lists but returns them literally. This behaviour is an overlook from past refactorings and was never documented.

rlang 0.1.2

CRAN release: 2017-08-09

This hotfix release makes rlang compatible with the R 3.1 branch.

rlang 0.1.1

CRAN release: 2017-05-18

This release includes two important fixes for tidy evaluation:

  • Bare formulas are now evaluated in the correct environment in tidyeval functions.

  • enquo() now works properly within compiled functions. Before this release, constants optimised by the bytecode compiler couldn’t be enquoted.

New functions:

  • The new_environment() constructor creates a child of the empty environment and takes an optional named list of data to populate it. Compared to env() and child_env(), it is meant to create environments as data structures rather than as part of a scope hierarchy.

  • The new_call() constructor creates calls out of a callable object (a function or an expression) and a pairlist of arguments. It is useful to avoid costly internal coercions between lists and pairlists of arguments.

UI improvements:

  • env_child()’s first argument is now .parent instead of parent.

  • mut_ setters like mut_attrs() and environment helpers like env_bind() and env_unbind() now return their (modified) input invisibly. This follows the tidyverse convention that functions called primarily for their side effects should return their input invisibly.

  • is_pairlist() now returns TRUE for NULL. We added is_node() to test for actual pairlist nodes. In other words, is_pairlist() tests for the data structure while is_node() tests for the type.

Bugfixes:

  • env() and env_child() can now get arguments whose names start with .. Prior to this fix, these arguments were partial-matching on env_bind()’s .env argument.

  • The internal replace_na() symbol was renamed to avoid a collision with an exported function in tidyverse. This solves an issue occurring in old versions of R prior to 3.3.2 (#133).

rlang 0.1.0

Initial release.