[R] how to use "..."

[David Winsemius]

On Jan 17, 2013, at 7:00 PM, John Sorkin wrote:

> Rolf
> Perhaps the philosophy of the help system needs to change . . .
> John
>

It's probably unwise to accept any one person's claim regarding the  
"philosophy of the help system". If you have the time, energy and  
skills to construct a help page for "..." then I would inquire on the  
r-devel mailing list whether such a submission would be considered.  
After looking at the help page for "+" I think it needs at the very  
least a reference to both the ?"formula" page (since that is a core  
part of hte language) and alos suggest it should describe  the  
overloadings of "+" in the lattice and ggplot2 packages. I think it's  
too much to expect users to know that "is an S4 generic" implies a  
wide variety of potential meanings. I think those oft-used examples of  
such meanings ought to be mentioned.

-- 
David.


> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jan 17, 2013, at 7:11 PM, "Rolf Turner <rolf.turner at xtra.co.nz>" <rolf.turner at xtra.co.nz 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> The "help" facility is applicable to functions and data sets.  It  
>> is not
>> designed
>> or intended to give "help" with respect to R syntax (with the  
>> exception of
>> the basic syntax of the operators --- unary and binary --- and the
>> associated
>> rules of precedence).
>>
>>    cheers,
>>
>>        Rolf Turner
>>
>> On 01/18/2013 09:17 AM, Steve Taylor wrote:
>>> The ellipsis object is not listed in the base help pages!
>>>
>>> help(`+`) # this works - help on arithmetic operators
>>> help("+") # also works
>>> help(`...`) # fails with Error: '...' used in an incorrect context
>>> help("...") # fails also with No documentation for '...' in  
>>> specified packages and libraries: you could try '??...'
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
>>> ] On Behalf Of Ivan Calandra
>>> Sent: Friday, 18 January 2013 4:43a
>>> To: R. Michael Weylandt
>>> Cc: R list
>>> Subject: =?utf-8?B?UmU6IFtSXSBob3cgdG8gdXNlICIuLi4i==?>>
>>> Do you know where I can find some documentation about it?
>>
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>>
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David Winsemius, MD
Alameda, CA, USA