R: View or List Package Vignettes or Edit their R Code Files

vignette {utils}

R Documentation

View or List Package Vignettes or Edit their R Code Files

Description

View a specific package vignette or its R code file, or list the available ones.

Usage

vignette(topic, package = NULL, lib.loc = NULL, all = TRUE)

## S3 method for class 'vignette'
print(x, ...)
## S3 method for class 'vignette'
edit(name, ...)

Arguments

topic

a character string giving the (base) name of the vignette to view, or an (unevaluated) expression of the form package::topic. If omitted, all vignettes from all installed packages are listed.

package

a character vector with the names of packages to search through, or NULL in which case ‘all’ packages (as defined by argument all) are searched.

lib.loc

a character vector of directory names of R libraries, or NULL. The default value of NULL corresponds to all libraries currently known.

all

logical; if TRUE search all available packages in the library trees specified by lib.loc, and if FALSE, search only attached packages.

x, name

object of class vignette.

...

ignored by the print method, passed on to file.edit by the edit method.

Details

Function vignette returns an object of the same class, the print method opens a viewer for it.

On Unix-alikes, the program specified by the pdfviewer option is used for viewing PDF versions of vignettes.

If several vignettes have PDF/HTML versions with base name identical to topic, the first one found is used.

If no topics are given, all available vignettes are listed. The corresponding information is returned in an object of class "packageIQR".

Examples

## List vignettes from all *attached* packages
vignette(all = FALSE)

## List vignettes from all *installed* packages (can take a long time!)
vignette(all = TRUE)

## List all vignettes of a specific package (package 'grid' has several)
vignette(package = "grid")

## Open one of the 'grid' vignettes
if(interactive()) {
  ## vignette("rotated", package = "grid")
  ## Or, the same:
  vignette(grid::rotated) # calling the print() method
}

## Now open the 'grid' intro vignette -- without specifying the package
## Not run: vignette("grid")
## OK, but warns as this topic is ambiguous: both {grid} and {lattice} have it.
## => Specify the 'package' argument or use the <package>::<topic> syntax
##    (also accelerates vignette retrieval, esp. with many installed packages):
v1 <- vignette("grid", package = "grid") # not "printed" (opened) yet
if(inherits(v1, "vignette")) { # it was found installed
  ## Not run: print(v1) # open it
  str(v1)
  ## To open the associated R code in an editor:
  ## Not run: edit(v1) # e.g., to send lines ...
}