[R] R Function Guide

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Jun 2001 07:23:14 +0100 (BST), Prof Brian D Ripley
> <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote in message
> <Pine.GSO.4.31.0106060712410.19713-100000 at auk.stats>:
>
> > Thre have been lots of postings to
> >R-help recently where help.search() would have given the answer, so it
> >looks like an under-used tool.
>
> What about making ?topic try help.search(topic) if help(topic) fails?
>
> It's a very small modification to the help() source, basically just
> replacing two "stop(some message)" calls with "cat(some message)", and
> adding the help.search calls.  I'd probably add another parameter
> "try.help.search" that defaults to FALSE when help() is called, and is
> set to TRUE when ? is used.

One issue in the past (including 1.2.3) is that the first time help.search
is called in a session it builds a database which can take minutes (lots
of packages, NFS disks). Looks a lot better under 1.3.0.

I think I would still rather say `try help.search(topic)'.

Brian

-- 
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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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