[BioC] how to check the parameters of the function ShortRead:::.freqSequences?

Steve Lianoglou mailinglist.honeypot at gmail.com
Thu Aug 23 18:03:59 CEST 2012


Hi,

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 11:24 AM, wang peter <wng.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> i tried
>
>> help(ShortRead:::.freqSequences)
> Error in help(ShortRead:::.freqSequences) :
>   'topic' should be a name, length-one character vector or reserved word
>
>> help(.freqSequences)
> No documentation for ‘.freqSequences’ in specified packages and libraries:
> you could try ‘??.freqSequences’
>
> nothing found

... and none is required.

Note that the author(s) of ShortRead are not making this function
available for general consumption -- it is a helper function for them.

If it were available for you to use, it would be loaded in your
workspace when you call `library(ShortRead)`. This is why you have to
fish the function out of the ShortRead package with `:::` in order to
get a handle on it.

Also, in general, you'll find that people prefix function names (vars,
etc.) with a "." when they don't really want people to call it
directly.

So, to recap: you can use it at your own risk, but you shouldn't
expect someone to support you in doing so.

That having been said, .freqSequences is only a ~ 6 line function, so
you should be able to grok it pretty easily ...

HTH,
-steve


-- 
Steve Lianoglou
Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology
 | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
 | Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact



More information about the Bioconductor mailing list