The distances package provides tools for constructing, manipulating and using distance metrics in R. It calculates distances only as needed (unlike the standard dist function which derives the complete distance matrix when called). This saves memory and can increase speed. The package also includes functions for fast nearest and farthest neighbor searching.

distances is on CRAN and can be installed by running:

install.packages("distances")

It is recommended to use the stable CRAN version, but the latest development version can be installed directly from Github using devtools:

if (!require("devtools")) install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("fsavje/distances")

The package contains compiled code, and you must have a development environment to install the development version. (Use devtools::has_devel() to check whether you do.) If no development environment exists, Windows users download and install Rtools and macOS users download and install Xcode.