[R] Non-visible functions are asterisked

[Gabor Grothendieck]

It means that the package has not exported it so normally you would
not access it directly.  For example, for summary.princomp you would
normally pass a princomp object to the summary generic.

If you did want to access summary.princomp directly, since it has not been
exported, you can use the form stats:::summary.princomp as just
summary.princomp won't work.  Normally this would not be desirable, though.

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)
<muenchen at utk.edu> wrote:
> Dear R-Helpers,
>
> I suspect I'm about to ask a FAQ, but I haven't been able to find an
> answer in the FAQ, AItR or an R Site Search. When I look at the methods
> of summary (below) it says, "Non-visible functions are asterisked". I
> looked at the help file for summary.princomp, which did not comment on
> it being non-visible. I ran its help file example, which printed visible
> output. I did not notice how it differed from other functions, like
> summary.data.frame that is not marked non-invisible. What does the
> non-visible mean?
>
> Thanks,
> Bob
>
> > methods(summary)
>  [1] summary.aov            summary.aovlist
>  [3] summary.connection     summary.data.frame
>  [5] summary.Date           summary.default
>  [7] summary.ecdf*          summary.factor
>  [9] summary.glm            summary.infl
> [11] summary.lm             summary.loess*
> [13] summary.manova         summary.matrix
> [15] summary.mlm            summary.nls*
> [17] summary.packageStatus* summary.POSIXct
> [19] summary.POSIXlt        summary.ppr*
> [21] summary.prcomp*        summary.princomp*
> [23] summary.stepfun        summary.stl*
> [25] summary.table          summary.tukeysmooth*
>
>   Non-visible functions are asterisked
>
> =========================================================
> Bob Muenchen (pronounced Min'-chen),
> Manager, Statistical Consulting Center
> U of TN Office of Information Technology
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