On 12/17/2007 6:00 AM, Patrick Burns wrote: > I recently had a discussion with a user about loading > and attaching in R. I was surprised that the help files > don't provide a very clear picture. > > From my point of view 'load' and 'attach' are very > similar operations, the difference being that 'attach' > creates a new database on the search list while 'load' > puts all the objects into the global environment. > > The help file for 'load' is inexplicit that this is what > happens. The 'load' and 'attach' help files neither refer > to the other in their See Also. > > Furthermore, the 'library' help file talks about "loading" > packages. I would suggest that it should use "attaching" > as that is the analogous operation. > > None of these three help files (nor that of 'save') has a > Side Effects section. Personally I think that all help files > should have a Side Effects section (to make it clear to > new users what side effects are and that they are not a > good thing for most functions to have). I can understand > there could be another point of view on that. However, I > definitely think that there should be a Side Effects section > in the help files of functions whose whole point is a side > effect.
I think you make good points. Care to submit patches? The source for those man pages are in https://svn.R-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/base/man/attach.Rd https://svn.R-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/base/man/library.Rd https://svn.R-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/base/man/load.Rd https://svn.R-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/base/man/save.Rd If you send them to me before Thursday or after Jan 2, I'll take a look. (If you send them to me during the Xmas break there's a good chance they'll get lost.) Duncan Murdoch ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel