R help - Jan 2007 - Conflict in .Rprofile documentation FAQ vs. Help?

Hi folks,
I note that in the general FAQ's we have
7.25 Why did my .Rprofile stop working when I updated R?

Did you read the NEWS file? For functions that are not in the base  
package you need to specify the correct package namespace, since the  
code will be run before the packages are loaded. E.g.,

      ps.options(horizontal = FALSE)
      help.start()

needs to be

      grDevices::ps.options(horizontal = FALSE)
      utils::help.start()

yet in the Help file under start up, we have

# Example of .Rprofile
options(width=65, digits=5)
options(show.signif.stars=FALSE)
ps.options(horizontal=FALSE)
....

Is this a conflict?

-Hank

Dr. Hank Stevens, Assistant Professor
338 Pearson Hall
Botany Department
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056

Office: (513) 529-4206
Lab: (513) 529-4262
FAX: (513) 529-4243
http://www.cas.muohio.edu/~stevenmh/
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http://www.muohio.edu/botany/

"E Pluribus Unum"






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On Mon, 15 Jan 2007, MHH Stevens wrote:
> Hi folks,
> I note that in the general FAQ's we have
> 7.25 Why did my .Rprofile stop working when I updated R?
>
> Did you read the NEWS file? For functions that are not in the base
> package you need to specify the correct package namespace, since the
> code will be run before the packages are loaded. E.g.,
>
>      ps.options(horizontal = FALSE)
>      help.start()
>
> needs to be
>
>      grDevices::ps.options(horizontal = FALSE)
>      utils::help.start()
>
> yet in the Help file under start up, we have
I guess you mean Startup.Rd in some unstated version of R like 2.4.1?
That needed updating.
> # Example of .Rprofile
> options(width=65, digits=5)
> options(show.signif.stars=FALSE)
> ps.options(horizontal=FALSE)
> ....
>
> Is this a conflict?
No one actually said it was a *working* example (and it is enclosed in 
\dontrun{}), which is what the FAQ entry is about.  A better version would 
be

setHook(packageEvent("grDevices", "onLoad"),
         function(...) grDevices::ps.options(horizontal=FALSE))


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595