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Course

Defensive R Programming

Intermediate

Updated 03/2025

Learn defensive programming in R to make your code more robust.

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RProgramming4 hours16 videos51 Exercises3,400 XP4,677Statement of Accomplishment

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Course Description

Writing R scripts is easy. Writing good R code is hard. In this course, we'll discuss defensive programming - a set of standard techniques that will help reduce bugs and aid working in teams. We examine techniques for avoiding common errors and also how to handle the inevitable error that arises in our code. The course will conclude looking at when to make the transition from script to project to package.

Prerequisites

1

Avoiding Conflict

Defensive R Programming

Real Programmers...

Don't reinvent the wheel/package

Updating Packages

Out of Date Packages

Packages and Namespaces

Number of Loaded Packages

Counting Exported Functions

The Conflicted Package

2

Early warning systems

Early warning systems

To TRUE or not to T

Let's be evil

If it weren't for those pesky kids

Message in a bottle

Did you get the message?

Suppressing startup messages

Stop being noisy!!!

Using message in practice

You have been warned

Messages vs Warnings

Suppressing warnings

Stop (right now)

Warnings vs Stop

Using the stop() function

3

Preparing your defenses

Preparing your defences

What does DRY mean?

Refactoring: functions

Just one comment

Header comments

A little bit dotty

Use a full stop in variable names

Avoiding the .

Coding Style

Importance of consistent style

Static Code Analysis for R

Code tidying

More linting

4

Creating a Battle Plan

A battle plan

The importance of consistency

Give me some space

Human readable filenames

What date format should we use?

Organizing a project

Avoiding absolute directories

The input/ directory

Absolute vs relative

Graphics and output

Generating graphics

One final work flow

Defensive R Programming

Course
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