Differences between %.% (dplyr) and %>% (magrittr)

Question

The dplyr package introduced the %.% operator to pass the left hand side as an argument of the function on the right hand side, similar to a *NIX pipe. The magrittr package is a much more lightweight package that exists to define only that pipe-like operator.

Yet one uses %.% and the other %>%.

Is there any difference between the two? Can I just use %>% even in dplyr code, or will that cause subtle bugs?

On inspecting the code, they take very different paths early on, so simple eyeball comparison would suggest that they're different. I haven't been able to find anything documented when I search the web for them, nor have I run across anything in the documentation itself.

Answer 1

dplyr now imports %>% from magrittr and uses it by default. See this answer for details.

---

Differences include

• you can use a . as placeholder for the left-hand side, e.g.

   iris %>% plot(Sepal.Length ~ Sepal.Width, data = .)
  

• %>% respects (rhs), e.g.

   1:10 %>% (call("sum"))
   1:10 %>% (function(x) x^2 + 2*x) 
  

  For a more useful example of this, see
  https://gist.github.com/anonymous/0c69b019d0b4f6ae5050

• For single argument function calls, you can omit parens:

   "2014-05-18" %>% as.Date
  

Answer 2

See the very first item in the current NEWS file:

dplyr now imports %>% from magrittr (#330). I recommend that you use this instead of %.% because it is easier to type (since you can hold down the shift key) and is more flexible