help(topic, offline = FALSE, package = c(.packages(), .Autoloaded), lib.loc = .lib.loc, verbose = .Options$verbose, htmlhelp = .Options$htmlhelp) ?topic
topic
| a name or character string on which documentation is sought (but not a variable containing a character string!). |
offline
| a logical indicating whether documentation should be displayed on-line to the screen (the default) or hardcopy of it should be produced. |
package
| a name or character vector giving the packages to look into for documentation. By default, all packages in the search path are used. |
lib.loc
| A character vector of directory names of R libraries. Defaults to all libraries currently known. |
verbose
|
logical; if TRUE , the file name is reported.
|
htmlhelp
|
logical (or NULL ). If TRUE (which is the
default after help.start has been called), the HTML
version of the help will be shown in a browser.
|
name
(typically, an R
object or a data set) can be printed with either help(name)
or
?name
.
In the case of unary and binary operators and control-flow special
forms, the name may need to be be quoted.
If offline
is TRUE
, hardcopy of the documentation is
produced by running the LaTeX version of the help page through
latex
(note that LaTeX 2e is needed) and dvips
.
Depending on your dvips
configuration, hardcopy will be sent to
the printer or saved in a file. If the programs are in non-standard
locations and hence were not found at compile time, you can either set
the options latexcmd
and dvipscmd
, or the environment
variables R_LATEXCMD
and R_DVIPSCMD
appropriately.
The appearance of the output can be customized through a file
`Rhelp.cfg' somewhere in your LaTeX search path.
help.start()
which opens the HTML version of the R
Manual;
library()
for listing available packages and the
user-level objects they contain;
data()
for listing available data sets;
methods()
.
See prompt()
to get a prototype for writing help
pages of private packages.
help() help(help) # the same help(lapply) ?lapply # the same help("for") # or ?"for", but the quotes are needed ?"+" help(package = stepfun) # get help even when it's not present data() # list all available data sets ?women # information about data set "women" topi <- "women" help(topi) ##--> Error: No documentation for `topi'