On Jun 13, 2015, at 9:25 PM, Ramnik Bansal wrote: > Thanks. But it seems to be an R 3.2.0 specific problem.
Exactly. That's why I needed to take the time to update my installation. I posted a message to R-devel after failing to find where the code was different in the two versions and not getting any understanding from tracing the 'help'-function. I do see in the R 3.1.2 version that this code: if (!missing(pattern)) { if (!is.character(pattern) || (length(pattern) > 1L)) stop(.wrong_args("pattern"), domain = NA) i <- pmatch(fields, FIELDS) if (anyNA(i)) stop("incorrect field specification") else fields <- FIELDS[i] } was changed .... to this: if (!missing(pattern)) { if (!is.character(pattern) || (length(pattern) > 1L)) stop(.wrong_args("pattern"), domain = NA) i <- pmatch(fields, hsearch_db_fields) if (anyNA(i)) stop("incorrect field specification") else fields <- hsearch_db_fields[i] } And I see this in the NEWS file: • New function hsearch_db() in package utils for building and retrieving the help search database used byhelp.search(), along with functions for inspecting the concepts and keywords in the help search database. -- David. > > On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 8:42 AM, David Winsemius <dwinsem...@comcast.net> > wrote: > > On Jun 13, 2015, at 7:41 AM, Ramnik Bansal wrote: > > > Getting following error in using help.search > > > >> utils::help.search("linear models") > > Error in help(db[i, "topic"], package = db[i, "Package"], lib.loc = lib, : > > 'topic' should be a name, length-one character vector or reserved word > > I first tried this in a Mac running the SL version for R 3.1.2 and did not > get this error. I updated my Mavericks laptop to R 3.2.0 and can now > reproduce this error. It does not seem to depend on having a space in the > argument. It seems to be thrown by this segment of code in the > `help()`-function: > > ischar <- tryCatch(is.character(topic) && length(topic) == > 1L, error = identity) > if (inherits(ischar, "error")) > ischar <- FALSE > if (!ischar) { > reserved <- c("TRUE", "FALSE", "NULL", "Inf", "NaN", > "NA", "NA_integer_", "NA_real_", "NA_complex_", "NA_character_") > stopic <- deparse(substitute(topic)) > if (!is.name(substitute(topic)) && !stopic %in% reserved) > stop("'topic' should be a name, length-one character vector or > reserved word") > > If gone through the `help.search` function code and cannot find where the > `help` function is actually called. This seems unlikely to be a Mac-specific > problem. > > > > > > >> example(help.search) > > > > hlp.sr> help.search("linear models") # In case you forgot how to fit > > linear > > Error in help(db[i, "topic"], package = db[i, "Package"], lib.loc = lib, : > > 'topic' should be a name, length-one character vector or reserved word > > > > > > How to sort this? > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > David Winsemius > Alameda, CA, USA > > David Winsemius Alameda, CA, USA ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.