[R] Modifying Package Data

[S Ellison]

> If 
> another user does not want to get the full taxonomic 
> description of that particular fly, he/she is welcome to 
> ignore it along with all the other taxa he/she is not referencing.

All true, but the OP was asking about modifying a file that is part of an installed. package.
That is surely a very bad idea. Modifying a data file in a package has side effects; at the very least, examples that use that .rda will return different results. If the file is essential for lookup or reference, other side effects will occur. 
And update.packages() will likely overwrite the modified file, as will updating R, so you'd essentially never know which version of the file you're using.

Using a modified copy, named differently and accessed via a different path that is immune to updates is far safer.

S Ellison

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