[Rd] (PR#11537) help (using ?) does not handle trailing whitespace

[Prof Brian Ripley]

I think it is ESS that is parsing this as a help request (so it can divert 
it to an ESS buffer).

Looks like this is an ESS issue, not an R one.

Using ?"agrep " will fail in R, but that seems correct as there is no 
topic "agrep ".

On Fri, 30 May 2008, Tim Hesterberg wrote:

> By whitespace, I mean either a space or tab (preceding the newline).
>
> I'm using ESS:
> ess-version's value is "5.3.6"
> GNU Emacs 21.4.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars) of
> 2007-08-28 on terranova, modified by Debian
>
> I have the following in my .emacs:
> (load "ess-5.3.6/lisp/ess-site")
> (setq ess-tab-always-indent nil)
> (setq ess-fancy-comments nil)
>
> I have not edited ess-site.el
>
>
> On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Prof Brian Ripley
> <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>> We don't know how to reproduce this: 'whitespace' is not specific enough.
>>
>> R's tokenizer breaks input at spaces, so a space would never be part of that
>> expression.  And tabs don't even get to the parser in interactive use, and
>> you cannot mean a newline.  So exactly what do you mean by 'whitespace'?
>>
>> The character in your email as received here is an ASCII space, and that is
>> used to end the token on all my systems.  That's not to say that you didn't
>> type something else that looks like a space (e.g. a nbspace) since email
>> systems are fickle.
>>
>> None of my guesses worked, so we need precise reproduction instructions.
>>
>> On Thu, 29 May 2008, rocket at google.com wrote:
>>
>>>> ?agrep
>>>>
>>>
>>> Results in:
>>>
>>> No documentation for 'agrep ' in specified packages and libraries:
>>> you could try 'help.search("agrep ")'
>>>
>>> There is white space after agrep, that ? doesn't ignore.
>>>
>>>
>>> --please do not edit the information below--
>>>
>>> Version:
>>> platform = i486-pc-linux-gnu
>>> arch = i486
>>> os = linux-gnu
>>> system = i486, linux-gnu
>>> status =
>>> major = 2
>>> minor = 7.0
>>> year = 2008
>>> month = 04
>>> day = 22
>>> svn rev = 45424
>>> language = R
>>> version.string = R version 2.7.0 (2008-04-22)
>>>
>>> Locale:
>>>
>>> LC_CTYPE=en_US;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=C;LC_COLLATE=C;LC_MONETARY=C;LC_MESSAGES=en_US;LC_PAPER=en_US;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>>>
>>> Search Path:
>>> .GlobalEnv, package:stats, package:graphics, package:grDevices,
>>> package:utils, package:datasets, package:showStructure, package:Rcode,
>>> package:splus2R, package:methods, Autoloads, package:base
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
>> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
>> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
>> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
>> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>>
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595