R help - Oct 2014 - Ways to get all function signatures of a library?

Hi List, 

are there ways to get signatures of all functions of a library in a
format that is easy to process by a programm (list, xml or so)?

The info about function name, return value and arguments (types) is all
there in the docs, but more in a human readable format embedded in much
extra information. How to extract it without writing a documentation
parser or so? I'm pretty sure the functionality exists, but did not find
it.

Thanks for any hint.

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten

Perhaps the
?formals
function in R is what you are looking for. Or maybe its (internal C) code.

Cheers,
Bert

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics
(650) 467-7374

"Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. And knowledge
is certainly not wisdom."
Clifford Stoll




On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 6:09 AM, Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Hi List,
>
> are there ways to get signatures of all functions of a library in a
> format that is easy to process by a programm (list, xml or so)?
>
> The info about function name, return value and arguments (types) is all
> there in the docs, but more in a human readable format embedded in much
> extra information. How to extract it without writing a documentation
> parser or so? I'm pretty sure the functionality exists, but did not
find
> it.
>
> Thanks for any hint.
>
> --
> cheers,
> Thorsten
>
> ______________________________________________
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> 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.

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 9:09 AM, Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Hi List,
>
> are there ways to get signatures of all functions of a library in a
> format that is easy to process by a programm (list, xml or so)?
>
> The info about function name, return value and arguments (types) is all
> there in the docs, but more in a human readable format embedded in much
> extra information. How to extract it without writing a documentation
> parser or so? I'm pretty sure the functionality exists, but did not
find
> it.
>
In general, R functions do not have argument and return types (and
don't even have to have names) but maybe this would do:

library(lattice) # need this for make.groups

# load the package of interest
library(zoo)

DF <- do.call(make.groups, Map(function(x) names(formals(get(x))),
ls("package:zoo")))
rownames(DF) <- NULL

giving:
> head(DF)
    data           which
1      x         as.Date
2    ...         as.Date
3      x as.Date.numeric
4 origin as.Date.numeric
5    ... as.Date.numeric
6      x      as.Date.ts





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