[R] How to google for R stuff?

[spencerg]

      There is also the relatively new "RSiteSearch" package.  It's 
"RSiteSearch.function" searches only help pages of contributed packages 
but returns the result in a data.frame (of class "RSiteSearch") sorted 
to put the most interesting package first with help pages sorted within 
packages.  If this package is installed, "system.file('doc', 
'RSiteSearch.pdf', package='RSiteSearch')" will give you the location of 
a 2-page description of the most important features of this package 
including examples that work.  Since that document was written, we've 
added "|" and "&" for combining the objects returned by different 
searches and "packageSum2" to add information from installed packages 
not available from "RSiteSearch" itself. 


      For example, I'm giving an invited presentation on "Fitting 
Nonlinear Differential Equations to Data in R" as part of a "Dynamics 
Workshop" in Vancouver this June 4-6 
(http://stat.sfu.ca/~dac5/workshop09/Welcome.html).  To prepare for 
that, I first did the following: 


de <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equation")
des <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equations")
# With "de" and "des", each finds things missed by the other. 
de. <- de | des # combine into one
sumDE <- packageSum2(de.) # add details on installed packages. 


      This helped me decide which packages I should look at first. 

      Hope this helps. 
      Spencer Graves

cryan at binghamton.edu wrote:
> For Google searches, I find that throwing in the term cran on every search helps weed out irrelevant pages.
>
> For example, instead of 
>
> r residuals
>
> I type
>
> r cran residuals
>
> --Chris Ryan
>
> ---- Original message ----
>   
>> Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:43:14 -0400
>> From: Luc Villandre <villandl at dms.umontreal.ca>  
>> Subject: Re: [R] How to google for R stuff?  
>> To: Kynn Jones <kynnjo at gmail.com>
>> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
>>
>>
>> Kynn Jones wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi!  I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other
>>> languages for years.
>>>
>>> One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use
>>> Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related
>>> questions.  With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like
>>> Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the
>>> language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant.
>>>  But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself
>>> in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak.
>>>
>>> So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around
>>> this annoyance.
>>>
>>> TIA!
>>>
>>> KJ
>>>
>>> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>   
>>>       
>> Hi Kynn,
>>
>> I've had this problem too in the beginning. Luckily, my personal 
>> experience has taught me that almost all relevant R-related information 
>> can be found either by searching directly through the archives of the 
>> different R-forums or by using the functions "RSiteSearch()" or 
>> "help.search()". The reference manuals provided with each package 
>> (easily accessible on CRAN) are also invaluable sources of information.
>>
>> Unfortunately, phrasing queries in a way that will yield relevant 
>> results is sometimes hard. Knowledge of the terminology mostly comes 
>>     
> >from experience, so patience is in order.
>   
>> Of course, as a last recourse, there's always the mailing list.
>>
>> Bottom line is, I suggest you try to avoid generic search engines and 
>> concentrate your efforts on the different R-forums (note that there are 
>> also package-specific forums).
>>
>> I suspect the more experienced R-users might have better strategies to 
>> propose though...
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -- 
>> *Luc Villandré*
>> /Biostatistician
>> McGill University Health Center -
>> Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute/
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>     
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
>