The unix help facility is better than nothing. But, for example, try to
find one of the options under par() without searching through the entire
par help file. I have found this infuriating for some time. It is
especially hard for a new user to know where to find the help. For
someone who knows Splus well, the present system may be adequate.
Anne
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anne E. York
National Marine Mammal Laboratory
Seattle WA 98115-0070 USA
e-mail: york@orca.akctr.noaa.gov
Voice: +1 206-526-4039
Fax: +1 206-526-6615
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Thu, 21 May 1998, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>
> > Date: Wed, 20 May 98 09:17:22 EST
> > From: Charles Pollak <Charles_Pollak@intmed.med.ohio-state.edu>
> > To: s-news@wubios.wustl.edu, donald@portal.ca (Alan Donald)
> > Subject: [S] Re:
> >
> > Your problem thinking of the name of the appropriate S function
> > (unlist in this case) perfectly illustrates a problem that many S
> > users have had. The problem will only grow worse as new functions
> > are added to an already large library. From the little I know about
> > inverted lists ("apropos" for example in Berkeley Unix), they would
> > fit the bill nicely. You would enter a word (in your case, "list"
> > or even "strip" or "vector") that might appear in the description of a
> > function, and a list of candidate function names would come back to
> > spark your recognition (rather than recall) memory.
>
> Yes, that is a good idea. That's why there is such a system. On
> Unix, try help.start() and enter the topic list. You get about 60
> items, including unlist. Or just try help.topic("list").
>
> On Windows, you can do a full text search on the help file, but not (as
> far as I know) a search on just the descriptions.
>
> Both this and apropos (which is the same as the more widespread man -k,
> at least on SunOS) rely on good short descriptions, of course.
>
> --
> Brian D. Ripley, ripley@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 272860 (secr)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
>
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