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

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.

Solution

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
```