collapse is a C/C++ based package for data transformation and statistical computing in R. It’s aims are:
Documentation comes in 7 different forms:
After installing collapse, you can call
help("collapse-documentation") which will produce a central
help page providing a broad overview of the entire functionality of the
package, including direct links to all function documentation pages and
links to 13 further topical documentation pages (names in
.COLLAPSE_TOPICS) describing how clusters of related
functions work together.
Thus collapse comes with a fully structured hierarchical documentation which you can browse within R - and that provides everything necessary to fully understand the package. The Documentation is also available online.
The package page under help("collapse-package") provides
some general information about the package and its design philosophy, as
well as a compact set of examples covering important functionality.
Reading help("collapse-package") and
help("collapse-documentation") is the most comprehensive
way to get acquainted with the package.
help("collapse-documentation") is always the most
up-to-date resource.
DeepWiki is an AI-powered platform designed to automatically generate structured, interactive documentation for software repositories, primarily on GitHub. Developed by Cognition AI—the same laboratory behind the autonomous AI engineer Devin—it serves as a dynamic, “Wikipedia-like” encyclopedia for codebases.
While not more comprehensive or accurate than the structured documentation, it is great to learn more about the internal structure of collapse and use a chatbot (Devin) to ask questions about or write code using collapse.
You can access the collapse DeepWiki here.
An article on collapse is forthcoming at Journal of Statistical Software in early 2026. If you want to ‘read something concise’ about collapse, this is the best place to start.
A fairly up-to-date (v2.0) cheatsheet compactly summarizes the package.
Updated vignettes are
collapse for tidyverse Users: A quick introduction to collapse for tidyverse users
collapse and sf: Shows how collapse can be used to efficiently manipulate sf data frames
collapse’s Handling of R Objects: A quick view behind the scenes of class-agnostic R programming
Developing with collapse: How to write efficient statistical packages using R and collapse
The other vignettes (only available online) do not cover major features introduced in versions >= 1.7, but contain much useful information and examples:
Introduction to collapse : Introduces key features in a structured way
collapse and dplyr : Demonstrates the integration of collapse with dplyr / tidyverse workflows and associated performance improvements
collapse and plm: Demonstrates the integration of collapse with plm and shows examples of efficient programming with panel data
collapse and data.table: Shows how collapse and data.table may be used together in a harmonious way
I maintain a blog linked to Rbloggers.com where I introduced collapse with some compact posts covering central functionality. Among these, the post about programming with collapse is useful for developers.
I have presented collapse (v1.8) in some level of detail at useR 2022. A 2h video recording that provides a quite comprehensive introduction is available here. The corresponding slides are available here.
I have recently presented collapse (v2.1) and the fastverse at a workshop on “Speeding Up Empirical Research: Tools and Techniques for Fast Computing” organized by the Bank of Portugal in December 2025. My 45-minute talk focused on two advanced applications in international trade and spatial network analysis/package development. You can find the materials (slides and recording) here.