[R] Defective help pages

[Uwe Ligges]

On 24.02.2010 21:34, Peter Danenberg wrote:
> I'm trying to diagnose a bizarre problem in which the help files
> invoked from R are partially defective. help(), for instance, is
> missing the Description, Arguments and See Also sections; as are help
> files for other commands (see below).

Peter, I just tried ?help with R-2.10.1 on 2 Windows and 2 Linux 
flavours. All of them had correct help pages. Looks like something is 
broken on your OS (unreported).

This seems to be plain text help, right?
Does the html version give the same result?

Best wishes,
Uwe



>
> I've built 2.8.1, 2.10.1 and HEAD with the same results; do I need to
> set an environment or configuration variable?
>
>    help                   package:utils                   R Documentation
>
>    Documentation
>
>    Description:
>
>
>    Usage:
>
>         help(topic, package = NULL, lib.loc = NULL,
>              verbose = getOption("verbose"),
>              try.all.packages = getOption("help.try.all.packages"),
>              help_type = getOption("help_type"))
>
>    Arguments:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>    Details:
>
>         The following types of help are available:
>
>            * Plain text help
>
>
>
>
>
>
>    Offline help:
>
>
>
>    Note:
>
>
>
>    References:
>
>         Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) _The New S
>         Language_.  Wadsworth&  Brooks/Cole.
>
>    See Also:
>
>
>
>    Examples:
>
>         help()
>         help(help)              # the same
>
>         help(lapply)
>
>         help("for")             # or ?"for", but quotes/backticks are
>         needed
>
>         help(package="splines") # get help even when package is not
>         loaded
>
>         topi<- "women"
>         help(topi)
>
>         try(help("bs", try.all.packages=FALSE)) # reports not found (an
>         error)
>         help("bs", try.all.packages=TRUE)       # reports can be found
>                                                 # in package 'splines'
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.