As has been pointed out, there are tools in R to help find the commands you are looking for.
As a practical note, I recommend starting with '?' if you think you know what command you need. If you're unsure of what command you need, my next step would be help.search(). Often, the results from here will point you to a command that you are looking for. If a handful of tries with help.search() doesn't get you what you need, then try RSiteSearch(). This will search the mailing list for entries relevant to your search criteria. Often times, you'll find that someone has already asked your question. In fact, I can only recall a couple of times where a search of the mailing list has failed to provide a solution for me. Aside from reading lots of documentation, the one thing that has helped me the most in picking up R has been reading Peter Dalgaard's "Introductory Statistics with R." It's a very small, basic introduction to R, but laid a solid enough foundation that I soon found myself able to produce and refine my own solutions. In short, the best way to improve our knowledge of R is lots of reading and a bit of trial and error. Benjamin -----Original Message----- From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of ManInMoon Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 4:41 AM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: [R] Help on getting help from manuals Hi, A number of people have suggested "I read the manuals"... Could someone help me by telling me where the primary start point is please? For example, I am interested in writing functions with variable number of arguments - where should I start to look? "An introduction to R" only show a brief example - with no pointer to where to find further data. I can't do ?xxx from R console in most cases - as I don't know what the function name is that I am looking for!!! People have helped me find "substitute" to get some metadata out - BUT how could I have found that without guidance from nice people in Nabble? Any help on this very much appreciated. -- View this message in context: http://n4.nabble.com/Help-on-getting-help-from-manuals-tp1590323p1590323 .html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ 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. =================================== P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail Cleveland Clinic is ranked one of the top hospitals in America by U.S.News & World Report (2009). Visit us online at http://www.clevelandclinic.org for a complete listing of our services, staff and locations. Confidentiality Note: This message is intended for use\...{{dropped:13}} ______________________________________________ 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.