Writing help files r

Rd file needs to be in the directory that you have set with setwd or set manually with point and click Both the. Rd file you use and the. Never miss an update! Subscribe to R-bloggers to receive e-mails with the latest R posts. You will not see this message again. This should be capitalized and not end in a period; try to limit its length to at most 65 characters for widest compatibility.

Markup is supported in the text, but use of characters other than English text and punctuation e. A short description of what the function s do es one paragraph, a few lines only. If a description is too long and cannot easily be shortened, the file probably tries to document too much at once. This is mandatory except for package-overview files. One or more lines showing the synopsis of the function s and variables documented in the file. These are set in typewriter font. This is an R-like command.

The usage information specified should match the function definition exactly such that automatic checking for consistency between code and documentation is possible. Rd contains. In the printed versions, this will come out as generic reflecting the understanding that methods should not be invoked directly but via method dispatch , but codoc and other QC tools always have access to the full name.

Note that there is no whitespace between the three parts of the entry. Optional text may precede 94 this list see for example the help for rle. A section with references to the literature. Use this for a special note you want to have pointed out. Information about the author s of the Rd file. See Marking text , and Cross-references. Examples of how to use the function. Code in this section is set in typewriter font without reformatting and is run by example unless marked otherwise see below.

Examples are not only useful for documentation purposes, but also provide test code used for diagnostic checking of R code. In addition, it should not use any system-specific features or require special facilities such as Internet access or write permission to specific directories. Example code must be capable of being run by example , which uses source. This means that it should not access stdin, e. This should be needed only occasionally but can be used for code which might fail in circumstances that are hard to test for, for example in some locales.

Use e. Use interactive to condition examples which need someone to interact with. The structure of Rd files which document R data sets is slightly different. Rd which documents the standard R data set rivers. Rd overview files. A description of the format of the data set as a vector, matrix, data frame, time series, ….

For matrices and data frames this should give a description of each column, preferably as a list or table. See Lists and tables , for more information. If bar is a data frame, documenting it as a data set can be initiated via prompt bar. Otherwise, the promptData function may be used. The topic names for S4 classes and methods respectively are of the form.

Skeletons of documentation for S4 classes and methods can be generated by using the functions promptClass and promptMethods from package methods. If a package has methods for a function defined originally somewhere else, and does not change the underlying default method for the function, the package is responsible for documenting the methods it creates, but not for the function itself or the default method.

Skeletons of documentation for a package can be generated using the function promptPackage. Otherwise the default comments will be inserted giving suggestions for content. All other content is optional. We suggest that it should be a short overview, to give a reader unfamiliar with the package enough information to get started. More extensive documentation is better placed into a package vignette see Writing package vignettes and referenced from this page, or into individual man pages for the functions, datasets, or classes.

Article Contributed By :. Easy Normal Medium Hard Expert. Writing code in comment? Please use ide. Load Comments. What's New. Most popular in R Language. More related articles in R Language.

We use cookies to ensure you have the best browsing experience on our website. It would be better to use them as a guide to create your own stable implementation. While Joshua's instructions work perfectly, I stumbled upon another strategy for saving an R helpfile; So I thought I'd share it. It works on my computer Ubuntu where less is the R pager.

It essentially just involves saving the file from within less. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. How to write contents of help to a file from within R?

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