[R] Help on getting help from manuals

[Nutter, Benjamin]

As has been pointed out, there are tools in R to help find the commands
you are looking for.

As a practical note, I recommend starting with '?' if you think you know
what command you need.

If you're unsure of what command you need, my next step would be
help.search().  Often, the results from here will point you to a command
that you are looking for.

If a handful of tries with help.search() doesn't get you what you need,
then try RSiteSearch().  This will search the mailing list for entries
relevant to your search criteria.  Often times, you'll find that someone
has already asked your question.  In fact, I can only recall a couple of
times where a search of the mailing list has failed to provide a
solution for me.

Aside from reading lots of documentation, the one thing that has helped
me the most in picking up R has been reading Peter Dalgaard's
"Introductory Statistics with R."  It's a very small, basic introduction
to R, but laid a solid enough foundation that I soon found myself able
to produce and refine my own solutions.

In short, the best way to improve our knowledge of R is lots of reading
and a bit of trial and error.

Benjamin 

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On Behalf Of ManInMoon
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 4:41 AM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] Help on getting help from manuals


Hi,

A number of people have suggested "I read the manuals"...

Could someone help me by telling me where the primary start point is
please?

For example, I am interested in writing functions with variable number
of arguments - where should I start to look?

"An introduction to R" only show a brief example - with no pointer to
where to find further data.

I can't do ?xxx from R console in most cases - as I don't know what the
function name is that I am looking for!!!

People have helped me find "substitute" to get some metadata out - BUT
how could I have found that without guidance from nice people in Nabble?

Any help on this very much appreciated.


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