[R] Using help() [or more likely help.search)_]

[Prof Brian Ripley]

??'normal distribution' seems to do rather well.  If you know that you 
want results from 'stats' you can confine the search to that package.

'normal' is such an overloaded word that searching for it is going to 
be overwhelming.  At least 'Normal' is AFAIR only used in one sense in 
statistics.

``onr could argue that listing the standard and recommended packades 
at the top of the help.search results -- patches to do so would be 
considered.  (Some of us keep other packages in separate libraries, in 
which case searching in R --vanilla does this automaticaly.)

A quck look at a good book on S/R would solve such basic issues as 
quickly as anything.

On Sun, 25 Jan 2009, Rolf Turner wrote:

>
> On 25/01/2009, at 2:33 PM, Michael Kubovy wrote:
>
>> Dear R-helpers,
>> 
>> I wonder if you can give me advice about the best way to use help().
>> 
>> (1) If I type ?normal because I forgot the name dnorm() I get a long
>> list of relevant pages. Getting to right page is laborious.
>> 
>> (2) If I remember dnorm() and want to be reminded of the call, I also
>> get a list of pages.
>> 
>> Advice?
>> 
>> It seems to me that if the output of help() listed base functions
>> first, it would go a long way toward improving the usefulness of this
>> function.
>
> I get the impression that you are confusing ``??'' and ``?''.
>
> If you type ``?normal'' you get a ``No documentation found'' message.
>
> If you type ``??normal'' you indeed get a long list of pages, some of
> which might be relevant.  (If you want help on ``dnorm'' then the relevant
> page is stats::Normal.  And then typing ``?Normal'' gets you what you
> want.  Which is somewhat on the obscure side of obvious, IMHO.)
>
> If you type ``?dnorm'' then you get exactly what you want immediately.
> Exactly?  Well, there's also info on pnorm, qnorm, and rnorm, but I
> expect you can live with that.
>
> Note that listing base functions first won't help you at all in this
> instance, since dnorm is in ***stats***, not in ***base***.
>
> There is no easy answer to ``How do I find the right function when I
> can't remember its name?''.  The ``??'' construct, RSiteSearch(),
> some Wiki-s that lurk about the traps, the task views on CRAN, and a
> few other things all help, but none of them solves the problem completely.
> When all else fails, post to this list and resign yourself to the fact
> you'll probably get a flame along with the answer to your question!
>
> 	cheers,
>
> 		Rolf Turner
>
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-- 
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