R help - Feb 2010 - Defective help pages

I'm trying to diagnose a bizarre problem in which the help files
invoked from R are partially defective. help(), for instance, is
missing the Description, Arguments and See Also sections; as are help
files for other commands (see below).

I've built 2.8.1, 2.10.1 and HEAD with the same results; do I need to
set an environment or configuration variable?

  help                   package:utils                   R Documentation

  Documentation

  Description:


  Usage:

       help(topic, package = NULL, lib.loc = NULL,
            verbose = getOption("verbose"),
            try.all.packages = getOption("help.try.all.packages"),
            help_type = getOption("help_type"))

  Arguments:











  Details:

       The following types of help are available:

          * Plain text help






  Offline help:



  Note:



  References:

       Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) _The New S
       Language_.  Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

  See Also:



  Examples:

       help()
       help(help)              # the same

       help(lapply)

       help("for")             # or ?"for", but
quotes/backticks are
       needed

       help(package="splines") # get help even when package is not
       loaded

       topi <- "women"
       help(topi)

       try(help("bs", try.all.packages=FALSE)) # reports not found (an
       error)
       help("bs", try.all.packages=TRUE)       # reports can be found
                                               # in package 'splines'

On 24.02.2010 21:34, Peter Danenberg wrote:
> I'm trying to diagnose a bizarre problem in which the help files
> invoked from R are partially defective. help(), for instance, is
> missing the Description, Arguments and See Also sections; as are help
> files for other commands (see below).
Peter, I just tried ?help with R-2.10.1 on 2 Windows and 2 Linux 
flavours. All of them had correct help pages. Looks like something is 
broken on your OS (unreported).

This seems to be plain text help, right?
Does the html version give the same result?

Best wishes,
Uwe


>
> I've built 2.8.1, 2.10.1 and HEAD with the same results; do I need to
> set an environment or configuration variable?
>
>    help                   package:utils                   R Documentation
>
>    Documentation
>
>    Description:
>
>
>    Usage:
>
>         help(topic, package = NULL, lib.loc = NULL,
>              verbose = getOption("verbose"),
>              try.all.packages =
getOption("help.try.all.packages"),
>              help_type = getOption("help_type"))
>
>    Arguments:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>    Details:
>
>         The following types of help are available:
>
>            * Plain text help
>
>
>
>
>
>
>    Offline help:
>
>
>
>    Note:
>
>
>
>    References:
>
>         Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) _The New S
>         Language_.  Wadsworth&  Brooks/Cole.
>
>    See Also:
>
>
>
>    Examples:
>
>         help()
>         help(help)              # the same
>
>         help(lapply)
>
>         help("for")             # or ?"for", but
quotes/backticks are
>         needed
>
>         help(package="splines") # get help even when package is
not
>         loaded
>
>         topi<- "women"
>         help(topi)
>
>         try(help("bs", try.all.packages=FALSE)) # reports not
found (an
>         error)
>         help("bs", try.all.packages=TRUE)       # reports can be
found
>                                                 # in package
'splines'
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.