[R] A comment about R:

[Jonathan Baron]

On 01/04/06 11:04, Franois Pinard wrote:
> I'm in the process of learning R.  While tutorials are undoubtedly very
> useful, and understanding that working and studying methods vary between
> individuals, what I (for one) would like to have is a fairly complete
> reference manual to the library.
> 
> Of course, we already have one, and that's marvellous already.  Yet, it
> is organised by library and, within each library, by function name: this
> organisation means that the manual is mainly used as a reference, or
> else, that it ought to be studied from cover to cover, dauntingly.

I think that many search facilities are helpful here:

1. help.search() searches all libraries on your computer by
default.

2. RSiteSearch() has an option of searching all functions in all
existing packages, in case you don't have a package and turn out
to need it: RSiteSearch([topic],restrict="functions")

I doubt that the sort of manual you describe is possible given
the very rapid growth of CRAN, and it would be really inadequate
if it did not include those packages.  Many of them are designed
for people in particular fields and turn out to be extremely
useful.

Jon
-- 
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron