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Re: [S] apropos (was re:unlist)

To: Anne York <york@orca.akctr.noaa.gov>, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [S] apropos (was re:unlist)
From: Marc Feldesman <feldesmanm@pdx.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 08:41:22 -0700
Cc: Charles_Pollak@intmed.med.ohio-state.edu, s-news@wubios.wustl.edu, donald@portal.ca
In-reply-to: <Pine.SGI.3.95.980521065717.25616C-100000@orca.akctr.noaa.g ov>
References: <199805211304.OAA00843@toucan.stats.ox.ac.uk>
Sender: owner-s-news@wubios.wustl.edu
The full-text search feature is broken in SPlus 4.5 for Windows.  There was
a public posting to this list about this from MathSoft.  They haven't
figured out a fix for it yet.  So, this option isn't even available for some.

At 07:06 AM 5/21/98 -0700, Anne York wrote:
>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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>
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Dr. Marc R. Feldesman
Professor and Chairman
Anthropology Department
Portland State University
P.O. Box 751
Portland, Oregon 97207
email:  feldesmanm@pdx.edu
phone:  503-725-3081
fax:    503-725-3905
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