[R] help(package)->sink()

[Gabor Grothendieck]

Spencer Graves <spencer.graves <at> pdf.com> writes:

:       1.  I failed to make method 1 work, though I've done that kind of 
: thing in the past, and I believe I could make it work if I had to. 
: 

I am using R 1.9.1 patched on Windows XP and at least there it seems
to work.  I did notice that I put a forward slash in the type statement
whereas I meant a backward slash although the forward slash worked anyways,
at least on my system.  Here is the output of an R session:

R> readLines("/mypager.bat")  # check content of mypager.bat file
[1] "type %1 > /myfile.txt"
R> old <- options()
R> options(pager = "/mypager.bat")
R> help(package = "mclust")
R> options(old) # reset options back if finished
R> head(readLines("/myfile.txt"))  # check 1st few lines of myfile.txt
[1] ""                                  "               Information on 
Package 'mclust'"
[3] ""                                  "Description:"                     
[5] ""                                  "Package: mclust"                  
R> R.version.string
[1] "R version 1.9.1, 2004-07-13"

:       4.  A request for "packageInfo.print" returned "object ... not 
: found".  A request for class(mclustInfo) confirmed that it was a 
: packageInfo object, so I tried getMethod("print",  "packageInfo");   I 
: got, 'No generic function defined for "print"'.  Then I tried, 
: getMethod("show", "packageInfo");  I got, 'No method defined for 
: function "show" and signature object = "packageInfo"'. 

Sorry about that.  I should have written print.packageInfo  since
the syntax of these things is genericmethod.class and print is the 
generic method and packageInfo is the class.

 
: Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
: 
: >Spencer Graves <spencer.graves <at> pdf.com> writes:
: >
: >: 
: >: I wanted to direct packageInfo to a file, so I could add comments, 
: >: e.g., in MS Word.  The following command stored the desired information 
: >: in an object: 
: >: 
: >:       mclustInfo <- help(package="mclust")
: >: 
: >:       Then "mclustInfo" displays it on my screen.  To direct it to a 
: >: file, I tried the following: 
: >: 
: >:       sink("mclust.txt")
: >:       mclustInfo
: >:       sink()
: >: 
: >:       This sequence created an empty file "mclust.txt", while displaying 
: >: mclustInfo on my screen.  After a few more failed attempts, I gave up 
: >: trying to be clever and copied the text from the screen into Word. 
: >
: >In addition to your copy and paste solution:
: >
: >1. You could intercept the file.show output by redefining the pager:
: >
: >   a. create a one line file called mypager.bat in \ with this line:
: >
: >      type %1 > /mclust.txt
: >
: >   (with appropriate modifications if you are using UNIX).
: >
: >   b. In R issue these commands:
: >
: >      old <- options()
: >      options(pager = "/mypager.bat")
: >      help(package = "mclust")
: >      options(old) # reset options back if finished
: >
: >2. Don't use R but go right to the DESCRIPTION and INDEX
: >   files.  getwd("library/mclust") should show you where
: >   to find them.
: >
: >3. If you don't care about the formatting:
: >
: >      sink("/mclust.txt")
: >      writeLines(unlist(help(package="mclust")$info))
: >      sink()
: >
: >4. You could modify packageInfo.print adding a file= argument.
: >
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: >  
: >
: 
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