R help - Nov 2003 - R function help arranged in categorical order ?

Hi,

I'm new to R and I'm finding it quite a chore trawling through the R 
documentation to find a function to carry out simple atomic tasks. Is any 
one aware of R help documentation that is aranged in functional categories 
for e.g.:

String manipulation
File I/O
Dataframe, List manipulation

etc, etc ...

Thanks

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That's usually what help.search() is for.  For example,
>  help.search("file", package = "base")
-roger

Neil Osborne wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to R and I'm finding it quite a chore trawling through the
R
> documentation to find a function to carry out simple atomic tasks. Is 
> any one aware of R help documentation that is aranged in functional 
> categories for e.g.:
>
> String manipulation
> File I/O
> Dataframe, List manipulation
>
> etc, etc ...
>
> Thanks
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get Hotmail on your mobile phone http://www.msn.co.uk/msnmobile
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>

Neil Osborne <r_stuff_online at hotmail.com>
wrote:
> Is any one aware of R help documentation that is aranged in functional
> categories for e.g.:
>   String manipulation
>   File I/O
>   Dataframe, List manipulation
There really oughta be.  Several people replied with ways to search the help,
but that assumes you know the specific task you want to perform, and the right
"keyword" to describe it.  Beginners often just want to learn
what's available.

For a few functional categories there are "general" help pages, and
you might
not easily stumble across them.  Here's a list I came up with recently. 
Just
type e.g. "?Arithmetic" at the R prompt to learn about Arithmetic
Operators.

?Arithmetic
?Comparison
?Control
?DateTimeClasses
?Defunct
?Deprecated
?Devices
?Extract     (same as ?Subscript)
?Foreign
?Logic
?Memory
?Paren
?Rdconv      (RdUtils page: Rdconv, Rd2dvi, Rd2txt, Sd2Rd)
?Special     (beta, gamma, choose, ...)
?Startup
?Syntax
?build       (PkgUtils page: R CMD build, R cmd check)
?connections (file, pipe, ...)
?pi          (Constants page: LETTERS, letters, month.abb, month.name, pi)

-- 
                              -- David Brahm (brahm at alum.mit.edu)

On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 19:18:28 +1300, you wrote:
>
>>Similarly help.search can list by categories, aka keywords.  Perhaps its
>>help page needs to say where the list of standard keywords is.
>>
>>  
>>
>But to list all the help pages in a given "category", you need to
use
>help.search(keyword="iplot",agrep=FALSE,package="base")
>or is there an easier way?
Use help.start().  This starts the HTML help system.  Follow the link
to "Search engine and keywords".

This works as long as you have an HTML browser configured.

Duncan Murdoch