[R] R function help arranged in categorical order ?

Martin Maechler maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Thu Nov 6 15:15:19 CET 2003


>>>>> "BDR" == Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
>>>>>     on Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:51:09 +0000 (GMT) writes:

    BDR> On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, David Brahm wrote:
    >> Neil Osborne <r_stuff_online at hotmail.com> wrote: > Is any
    >> one aware of R help documentation that is aranged in
    >> functional > categories for e.g.: > String manipulation >
    >> File I/O > Dataframe, List manipulation
    >> 
    >> There really oughta be.  Several people replied with ways
    >> to search the help, but that assumes you know the
    >> specific task you want to perform, and the right
    >> "keyword" to describe it.  Beginners often just want to
    >> learn what's available.

    BDR> Well, as described in your quotation you need to know
    BDR> the `functional categories' and help.start's search
    BDR> page does list the known `functional categories' and
    BDR> will list under each one. So there really IS, not
    BDR> `oughta be',

    BDR> Similarly help.search can list by categories, aka
    BDR> keywords.  Perhaps its help page needs to say where the
    BDR> list of standard keywords is.

Good, idea!
such as tell the user to execute
	file.show(file.path(R.home(),"doc", "KEYWORDS"))

{BTW, a problem with KEYWORDS is that "R CMD check" works
 with KEYWORDS.db, and the human readable KEYWORDS needs to be
 kept in sync with *.db manually}.

Martin




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