> > But you also have to be able to identify if it is a S3 function or an > > S4 method (or an ordinary function). > > Why not just type ?summary, which as I said, does tell you up front?
If R can save the novice user a couple of steps in their search for help, why not do it? Getting documentation on what the summary of an mle object does is another example. I tried: * summary.mle and summary.mle-class (of course I knew those wouldn't work, but nothing in the documentation of mle suggests that it wouldn't) * mle?summary and then summary?mle in case I had gotten it back to front * I finally run the example in mle and used ?summary(fit) > > The reason I find this so much of a problem is that when you are > > teaching R, one of the first things you want to do is teach your > > students how to use help. However, you can't teach them to use it > > effectively until they know an awful lot about how the call semantics > > of R. > > In many years of teaching S/R I have not found that to be a problem. In my one year of teaching R I have. How do you teach people how to use help? Hadley ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
