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checkmate

Fast and versatile argument checks for R.

Ever used an R function that produced a not-very-helpful error message, just to discover after minutes of debugging that you simply passed a wrong argument?

Blaming the laziness of the package author for not doing such standard checks (in a dynamically typed language such as R) is at least partially unfair, as R makes theses types of checks cumbersome and annoying. Well, that's how it was in the past.

Enter checkmate.

Virtually every standard type of user error when passing arguments into function can be caught with a simple, readable line which produces an informative error message in case. A substantial part of the package was written in C to minimize any worries about execution time overhead. Furthermore, the package provides over 30 expectations to extend the popular testthat package for unit tests.

Installation

For the stable release, just install the latest version from CRAN:

install.packages("checkmate")

For the development version, use devtools:

devtools::install_github("mllg/checkmate")

Resources

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Version

Install

install.packages('checkmate')

Monthly Downloads

290,214

Version

2.3.3

License

BSD_3_clause + file LICENSE

Issues

Pull Requests

Stars

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Repository

https://github.com/mllg/checkmate

Homepage

https://mllg.github.io/checkmate/

Maintainer

Michel Lang

Last Published

August 18th, 2025

Functions in checkmate (2.3.3)

Check the class membership of an argument

Check if an argument is a vector of type complex

Check that an argument is a Date

Check if an object is an element of a given set

Check if an argument is a vector of type character

Check if an argument is a data frame

checkDirectoryExists

Check for existence and access rights of directories

Check if an argument is disjunct from a given set

Check if an argument is a count

Check if an argument is a data table

Check if an argument is a flag

checkFileExists

Check existence and access rights of files

Check if an argument is a formula

Check that an argument is a vector of type double

Check if an argument is vector of type integer

Check if an argument is a function

checkEnvironment

Check if an argument is an environment

Check if an argument is a single integerish value

Check if an argument is FALSE

Check if an argument is a factor

checkMultiClass

Check the class membership of an argument

Check if an argument is named

Check if an argument is a vector of type logical

checkIntegerish

Check if an object is an integerish vector

Check that an argument is a vector of type numeric

Check if an argument is a single numeric value

Check if an argument is a matrix

Check if an argument is NULL

Check names to comply to specific rules

Check if an argument is a list

Check if an argument is a string

checkPathForOutput

Check if a path is suited for creating an output file

Check if an argument is a raw vector

Check if an argument is equal to a given set

Check that an argument is a date/time object in POSIXct format

Check if an argument is a single atomic value

Check the operating system

checkPermutation

Check if the arguments are permutations of each other.

Check if an argument is an R6 class

Check if an argument is a single missing value

Coalesce operator

Turn a Check into an Assertion

makeExpectation

Turn a Check into an Expectation

Check if an argument is a tibble

Check if an argument is a subset of a given set

Check if an argument is TRUE

Partial Argument Matching

Turn a Check into a Test

Lookup a variable name

Get the index of the first/last TRUE

register_test_backend

Select Backend for Unit Tests

checkmate-package

checkmate: Fast and Versatile Argument Checks

Check if an argument is a vector

Quick recursive arguments checks on lists and data frames

Quick argument checks on (builtin) R types

checkAtomicVector

Check that an argument is an atomic vector

AssertCollection

Collect multiple assertions

Check file system access rights

Check if an argument is an array

Check if an object contains NaN values

Convert an argument to an integer

Check if an object contains infinite values

Combine multiple checks into one assertion

Check that an argument is an atomic vector

Check if an object contains missing values