R devel - Dec 2006 - A possible improvement to apropos

Hello all,

I've had the following apropos alternative in my ~/.Rprofile for some
time, and have found it more useful than the current version.
Basically, my version ignores case when searching.

If others find this useful, perhaps apropos could be suitably patched
(and I'd be willing to create such a patch).

+ seth

Here is my version of apropos:


APROPOS <- function (what, where = FALSE, mode = "any") 
{
    if (!is.character(what))
      stop("argument ", sQuote("what"), " must be a
character vector")
    x <- character(0)
    check.mode <- mode != "any"
    for (i in seq(search())) {
        contents <- ls(pos = i, all.names = TRUE)
        found <- grep(what, contents, ignore.case = TRUE, value = TRUE)
        if (length(found)) {
            if (check.mode) {
                found <- found[sapply(found, function(x) {
                    exists(x, where = i, mode = mode, inherits = FALSE)
                })]
            }
            numFound <- length(found)
            x <- c(x, if (where)
                   structure(found, names = rep.int(i, numFound)) else found)
        }
    }
    x
}

Hi Seth,
>>>>> "Seth" == Seth Falcon <sfalcon at
fhcrc.org>
>>>>>     on Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:38:02 -0800 writes:
    Seth> Hello all, I've had the following apropos alternative
    Seth> in my ~/.Rprofile for some time, and have found it
    Seth> more useful than the current version.  Basically, my
    Seth> version ignores case when searching.

    Seth> If others find this useful, perhaps apropos could be
    Seth> suitably patched (and I'd be willing to create such a
    Seth> patch).

Could you live with typing 'i=T' (i.e.  ignore.case=TRUE)?

In principle, I'd like to keep the default  as ignore.case=FALSE,
since we'd really should teach the users that R 
*is* case sensitive.
Ignoring case is the exception in the S/R/C world, not the rule

I have a patch ready which implements your suggestion
(but not quite with the code below), but as said, not as
default.

Martin

    Seth> + seth

    Seth> Here is my version of apropos:
>> APROPOS <- function (what, where = FALSE, mode = "any") 
>> {
>>     if (!is.character(what))
>>       stop("argument ", sQuote("what"), " must
be a character vector")
>>     x <- character(0)
>>     check.mode <- mode != "any"
>>     for (i in seq(search())) {
>>         contents <- ls(pos = i, all.names = TRUE)
>>         found <- grep(what, contents, ignore.case = TRUE, value =
TRUE)
>>         if (length(found)) {
>>             if (check.mode) {
>>                 found <- found[sapply(found, function(x) {
>>                     exists(x, where = i, mode = mode, inherits = FALSE)
>>                 })]
>>             }
>>             numFound <- length(found)
>>             x <- c(x, if (where)
>>                    structure(found, names = rep.int(i, numFound)) else
found)
>>         }
>>     }
>>     x
>> }