There is also the relatively new "RSiteSearch" package. It's
"RSiteSearch.function" searches only help pages of contributed packages
but returns the result in a data.frame (of class "RSiteSearch") sorted
to put the most interesting package first with help pages sorted within
packages. If this package is installed, "system.file('doc',
'RSiteSearch.pdf', package='RSiteSearch')" will give you the location of
a 2-page description of the most important features of this package
including examples that work. Since that document was written, we've
added "|" and "&" for combining the objects returned by different
searches and "packageSum2" to add information from installed packages
not available from "RSiteSearch" itself.
For example, I'm giving an invited presentation on "Fitting
Nonlinear Differential Equations to Data in R" as part of a "Dynamics
Workshop" in Vancouver this June 4-6
(http://stat.sfu.ca/~dac5/workshop09/Welcome.html). To prepare for
that, I first did the following:
de <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equation")
des <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equations")
# With "de" and "des", each finds things missed by the other.
de. <- de | des # combine into one
sumDE <- packageSum2(de.) # add details on installed packages.
This helped me decide which packages I should look at first.
Hope this helps.
Spencer Graves
cr...@binghamton.edu wrote:
For Google searches, I find that throwing in the term cran on every search
helps weed out irrelevant pages.
For example, instead of
r residuals
I type
r cran residuals
--Chris Ryan
---- Original message ----
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:43:14 -0400
From: Luc Villandre <villa...@dms.umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: [R] How to google for R stuff?
To: Kynn Jones <kyn...@gmail.com>
Cc: r-help@r-project.org
Kynn Jones wrote:
Hi! I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other
languages for years.
One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use
Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related
questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like
Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the
language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant.
But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself
in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak.
So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around
this annoyance.
TIA!
KJ
[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Hi Kynn,
I've had this problem too in the beginning. Luckily, my personal
experience has taught me that almost all relevant R-related information
can be found either by searching directly through the archives of the
different R-forums or by using the functions "RSiteSearch()" or
"help.search()". The reference manuals provided with each package
(easily accessible on CRAN) are also invaluable sources of information.
Unfortunately, phrasing queries in a way that will yield relevant
results is sometimes hard. Knowledge of the terminology mostly comes
>from experience, so patience is in order.
Of course, as a last recourse, there's always the mailing list.
Bottom line is, I suggest you try to avoid generic search engines and
concentrate your efforts on the different R-forums (note that there are
also package-specific forums).
I suspect the more experienced R-users might have better strategies to
propose though...
Cheers,
--
*Luc Villandré*
/Biostatistician
McGill University Health Center -
Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute/
______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
