[R-SIG-Mac] Some introductory questions

[David Winsemius]

> On Sep 6, 2020, at 4:31 PM, Mike Feher <mfeher1971 using gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> As I’m getting familiar with R, I have some basic questions that I thought
> of to shoot to useRs:

You should review the ListInfo material. Most of these questions have nothing to do with the Mac version of R.
> 
> 1. When looking up library functions, symbols, objects, etc., is there a
> Google-style “global search” capability for all that is available with my
> installation?  Or is it just all accessible via navigating the help() tree?

You should be trying help.search() or it's shortcut `??`

> 2. Are these objects, etc. stored on disk somewhere, or are they only
> accessible via the interfaces?  For example, I would be interested to see
> the source code for the demo examples to learn how to do certain things, if
> this is possible.  (It appeared as if the code for each demo that is
> executed as part of the ‘demo()’ command displayed in my R console, but I
> just want to be sure about this.)

Not sure what you are considering "interfaces". Pretty much everything is on disk.


> 3. How does one restore a saved session automatically?  Is that saved in a
> file or files anywhere on the local filesystem?

They are generally automagically reloaded if you exited in a manner that saved them and restart from the same directory. The state of the previous session is stored in a special .Rdata file which is invisible to Macs and Windoze machines by default. You need to modify your system file manage to see them. Read about .Rdata files and how to use them. 

> 4. I tried to read in a set of dummy space-delimited data saved in an
> absolute path on my computer, but it would not work.

Sadder words were never written, but most of the sadness derives from the failure to efficiently communicate what "it" actually was.

>  I tried something in
> another path that did not have a subfolder with a space in it (I.e. I plan
> on storing my data in a folder called “R Documents” or something similar)
> and that didn’t work either, so I’m still wondering whether or not (a)
> things have to be in the library location (it seems like you could
> customize that) and (b) whether R recognizes spaces in file paths.

R does recognize space on a Mac. You need to provide actual code. I cannot intuit what errors you are making from this description.

> 
> Please keep in mind that I am consulting the documentation first, but maybe
> not doing a global Google search for examples of these things.  I’m trying
> to remember to do both as I go along, so as not to bother everyone.
> 
> Regards and thanks in advance,
> Mike
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
Well you are not reading the documentation for this list (or any of the several R-project list) since you are posting in HTML.

Hth;
David.
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