descFun: Get textual help on function or function arguments

Description

Textual help on functions or their arguments is extracted for text online help for a given function. By default, all arguments from the online help are returned for descArgs(). If the file contains help for several functions, one probably gets also some irrelevant information. Use of 'args' to limit result is strongly encouraged.

Usage

descFun(fun, package, lib.loc = NULL)
descArgs(fun, args = NULL, package = NULL, lib.loc = NULL)

Arguments

fun

a character string with the name of a function (several functions accepted for descFun().

args

either NULL (by default) to return the description of all arguments from the corresponding man page, or a character vector with names of the arguments to search for.

package

a character string with the name of the package that contains fun, or NULL for searching in all loaded packages.

lib.loc

a character vector of directory names of Rlibraries, or NULL. The default value of NULL corresponds to all libraries currently known. If the default is used, the loaded packages are searched before the libraries.

Value

A string with the description of the function or of its arguments. If the man page is not found, a vector of empty strings is returned. Empty strings are also returned for arguments that are not found in the man page.

concept

Graphical user interface (GUI) control

Examples

Run this code

descFun("ls", "base")
descFun("library", "base")
descFun("descFun", "svMisc")
descFun("descArgs")
descArgs("ls")
descArgs("library", args = c("package", "pos"))