R devel - Nov 2012 - What is the INDEX file for?

Hi the list,

In WRE (or in Rdindex), we can find how the INDEX is make, how to change it, but
I do not manage to
find the purpose of this file. So what is the INDEX file for?

Thanks
Christophe

-- 
Christophe Genolini
Ma?tre de conf?rences en bio-statistique
Vice pr?sident Communication interne et animation du campus
Universit? Paris Ouest Nanterre La D?fense

On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Christophe Genolini
<cgenolin@u-paris10.fr>wrote:
> Hi the list,
>
> In WRE (or in Rdindex), we can find how the INDEX is make, how to change
> it, but I do not manage to find the purpose of this file. So what is the
> INDEX file for?
>
>
It's an index, or more precisely a table of contents for the package.

The INDEX is part of what is displayed by help(package="pkgname").  It
was
more important before package help pages and vignettes, especially for
non-GUI systems when it could be quite hard to work out which function help
pages to look at in an unfamiliar package.

    -thomas

-- 
Thomas Lumley
Professor of Biostatistics
University of Auckland

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