Finding code (was: [R] A request)

[Jonathan Baron]

On 04/02/02 10:38, E.L. Willighagen wrote:
>On Tuesday 02 April 2002 10:05, Uwe Ligges wrote:
>> "E.L. Willighagen" wrote:
>Interesting point, because I am working on a library with the same issues:
>how to make stuff easy to find... R offers keywords, aliases and full-text 
>search. But that is all, right? 
>
>And these only work for installed packages (i.e. those within the search 
>path...) And (just tested), full-text search does not include searching 
>references or descriptions, right (i.e. \description{} and \reference{})? 
>
>For example,
>> help.search("Dongarra")
>No help files found with alias or title matching `Dongarra'
>
>Dongarra is author from article in svd().
>
>Did I miss some crucial functionality of help() and help.search()? Why can 
>only keywords and aliasses be searched?

Searching for "Dongarra" on
http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu
in the link called
"Search R documents, functions, and R-help archive"
yields 7 matches for "Dongarra".
(The new default includes R-help only after 1999, but the earlier
stuff is still available.)

It seems to me rather difficult to build into R itself a search
facility for functions that are not installed on your system.  As
more and more packages are contributed - and, really, they ARE
getting contributed at what seems to me a high rate, and some
from people other than the core team - it would be hard to keep
up with them.  This is, I think, a good use for the web.  There
are now several alterantive search engines listed in CRAN under
"Search".

Jon Baron
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