Q:

Restore base library

I've written over the "summary" function from my "base" package with a new package in R "SVILD". I'm trying to work out how to restore the original base function in R. The trouble has been that I can't install "base" like other packages. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

A:

To flesh out the comment - different packages in R can contain functions with the same name. To get around this, they come with a "namespace" - a space for their names to live in. To access functions in a particular namespace, use the :: operator, as in package::function.
The base package will generally be at the bottom of your search path, so if you've attached other packages and need to use a base function which has been masked, use base::function.
Excellent reading on this topic can be found here: http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/namespace.html

