ManInMoon wrote:
Hi,
A number of people have suggested "I read the manuals"...
Could someone help me by telling me where the primary start point is please?
In R, type
help.start ()
this should open a browser window with links to
- the packages
- the manuals
- a search engine
Please note: this is written in section 1.7 "Getting help with functions and
features" of Introduction to R
In the same section, you learn about
help.search
Note also:
? help
leads you to the man page describing the help system. In section "see also" you
find a list of other useful commands to find help
If you look them up and look a again what alternatives they suggest and actually
try them out (again with topic "help") you will come across all informations
about finding help on R topics that is written in this email.
- There also exists apropos ().
- In addition, e.g. reading this mailing list, you learn about the sos package.
- You can also use the internet resources: on r-project.org -> manuals
- I personally use a lot:
http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/cgi-bin/namazu.cgi (which is where RSiteSearch ()
gets you). You can nicely decide where to search: documentation of R and CRAN
packages, and/or the mailing list archives.
Homework try out & read the results of:
RSiteSearch ("help")
For example, I am interested in writing functions with variable number of
arguments - where should I start to look?
"An introduction to R" only show a brief example - with no pointer to where
to find further data.
I can't do ?xxx from R console in most cases - as I don't know what the
function name is that I am looking for!!!
Then do
??xxx
or
???xxx (needs sos)
or
RSiteSearch ("xxx")
or
apropos ("xxx")
...
which you could have found out by reading
? help
People have helped me find "substitute" to get some metadata out - BUT how
could I have found that without guidance from nice people in Nabble?
Any help on this very much appreciated.
Sometimes it _is_ difficult to find the correct search terms.
However, I think that people in this list will appreciate if you
- show that you did search before asking, and also tell then with which terms
you did the search
- particularly for questions about the meaning of commands:
Try them out!
Put the command into pieces and look what each piece does
- people will appreciate if you ask what the correct search terms are for your
problem (as opposed to ask them doing your "homework")
Learning R is learning a language. Including vocabulary (i.e. terms for the
different concepts).
Asking for help with searching is like asking "How do you say in R for
concept xyz?" instead of "Could anyone do the translation I got as homework?"
HTH,
Claudia
--
Claudia Beleites
Dipartimento dei Materiali e delle Risorse Naturali
Università degli Studi di Trieste
Via Alfonso Valerio 6/a
I-34127 Trieste
phone: +39 0 40 5 58-37 68
email: cbelei...@units.it
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