I just tried ?Constants at the console and was disappointed that the so-named base help page would not come up. > ?Constants No documentation for 'Constants' in specified packages and libraries: you could try '??Constants' Seems like there should have been a match. I was looking for the month abbreviations, failing to hit the right name 4 times and then failing 3 more times on variations of what I remembered to be the name of that page and finally ended up typing: ?letters -- David Winsemius, MD West Hartford, CT
Yes, odd that ?Constants doesn't work, given that there is a page labeled
Constants {base}.
On a happier note, these all work now on my Mac R version 2.11.1
> ?base
> ?stats
> ?utils
though Constants is not an entry in the index.
R help gurus - is it possible to have entries such as "Constants"
for such help pages that discuss multiple functions?
On further poking around I do see an index entry for "assignOps"
for page assignOps {base} so the answer is obviously "yes".
I guess it's now a matter of providing a patch or convincing
an R developer to do so in his copious spare time :)
Steven McKinney
Statistician
Molecular Oncology and Breast Cancer Program
British Columbia Cancer Research Centre
________________________________________
From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org [r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On
Behalf Of David Winsemius [dwinsemius at comcast.net]
Sent: January 6, 2011 9:08 PM
To: r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [Rd] Indexing request
I just tried ?Constants at the console and was disappointed that the
so-named base help page would not come up.
> ?Constants
No documentation for 'Constants' in specified packages and libraries:
you could try '??Constants'
Seems like there should have been a match. I was looking for the month
abbreviations, failing to hit the right name 4 times and then failing
3 more times on variations of what I remembered to be the name of that
page and finally ended up typing:
?letters
--
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT
______________________________________________
R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
On 11-01-07 12:08 AM, David Winsemius wrote:> > I just tried ?Constants at the console and was disappointed that the > so-named base help page would not come up. > > > ?Constants > No documentation for 'Constants' in specified packages and libraries: > you could try '??Constants' > > Seems like there should have been a match. I was looking for the month > abbreviations, failing to hit the right name 4 times and then failing > 3 more times on variations of what I remembered to be the name of that > page and finally ended up typing: >I do see that page as the first hit if I follow the advice and type ??Constants, though there seems to be a problem with the OSX help system and that particular page. But I agree with you, and will add Constants to the index. For future reference: Every help page has: - a name (in this case "Constants"), which is what is displayed at the top of the help page. It also determines the order in which pages are collated into the full manual, if you build one of those. - a title (which is a one-line explanation of the page); here it is "Built-in constants". That is shown in the results from ??Constants. - a number of aliases, which are indexed. Those are the things which work with a single ?. In this case they are "LETTERS", "letters", "month.abb", "month.name", and "pi". - a filename (which you'll never see), in this case it's src/library/base/man/Constants.Rd. That's the file to edit to make this change. In most cases the name is repeated as an alias, but for some reason (flexibility?) that's not a requirement, and is not always the case, as here. If I were designing the system I would say the name is automatically an alias, but perhaps there are cases where that would be undesirable. I'll add it as an alias here. I've passed on a message about the problem on that page, and it should eventually be fixed. Duncan Murdoch