On Jan 20, 2013, at 11:46 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
On 13-01-20 2:28 PM, Steve Taylor wrote:
From: Duncan Murdoch
Maybe we just need a manual on how to use the existing help
system. But
I suspect people who won't read the existing manuals won't read that
one, either.
Duncan, I assume you're being facetious. Every R user soon learns
to use help() and help.search() or their equivalents. We don't
need a manual to teach that.
There are other parts of the help system that you don't appear to
know about. Run help.start() for the main index page. help() is
kind of a shortcut to the section labelled "Packages".
help.search() gets you to "Search Engine & Keywords". There are 15
other headings to explore as well.
help.search("...")
On my Mac after a very long wait it appears I get all of the functions
in every installed package that have a three-dots argument in their
argument list displayed in the Usage sections. That does not seem very
"help"-ful. I tried limiting with keyword="programming", that did not
appear effective. I wasn't able to figure out from the
help(help.search) page what I need to do to constrict to non-Usage
matches yet expand to items linked from the help.start() page.
If I just search with a browser for "..." in "Introduction to R" I get
what I consider to be useful material.
--
David.
Rolf Turner wrote:
The "help" facility is applicable to functions and data sets.
It is not
designed
or intended to give "help" with respect to R syntax (with the
exception of
the basic syntax of the operators --- unary and binary --- and the
associated
rules of precedence).
Then why are there help
pages ?":::", ?"for", ?"NA_character_", ?".C" and ?"??" but
not ?"..." ?!
Those are all functions or other objects, while ... is not. There
are examples of topic aliases that are not objects, e.g. ?Syntax,
but mostly Rolf is right. Most discussion of the syntax is in the
manuals.
Duncan Murdoch
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