How to resolve conflicts in symbol packages?

Question

I want to use symbols from wasysym and marvosym packages:

\usepackage{wasysym}
\usepackage{marvosym}

but it gives an errors as both packages have the command of \CheckedBox. I do not want to use this command, but since both packages have it, it makes confusion for latex. How can I ignore one command to have both packages?

Answer 1

If you load the packages in the other order, then everything works fine.

\usepackage{marvosym}
\usepackage{wasysym}

If you want to keep them in the order you currently have, then the following works

\usepackage{wasysym}
\let\CheckedBox\relax
\usepackage{marvosym}

Answer 2

As cmhughes indicates, sometimes loading the packages in reverse order solves the problem. However, if reversing the order still produces clashes, or if, for some reason, reversing the order is not an option, there's a nice procedure to prevent symbol names clashes when two packages define the same symbol(s): load the first package, rename the conflicting symbols, and then load the second package. The \savesymbol command from the savesym package can be used to this; \savesymbol{XXX} renames a symbol from \XXX to \origXXX:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{savesym}
\usepackage{wasysym}
\savesymbol{CheckedBox}
\usepackage{marvosym}

\begin{document}

\CheckedBox\qquad\origCheckedBox

\end{document}