[R] [R-SIG-Mac] R 3.2, Mac 10.10.3 : help.search showing error

[David Winsemius]

On Jun 13, 2015, at 11:04 PM, Berend Hasselman wrote:

> 
>> On 14-06-2015, at 06:25, Ramnik Bansal <ramnik.bansal at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Thanks. But it seems to be an R 3.2.0 specific problem.
>> 
> 
> I replied with the following to a similar message on R-devel.

There was no error either with using help() or using the Mac GUI package manager. Those were the reported difficulties previously reported.

> 
> ————————————————————————
> See this thread on R-SIG-Mac
> 
> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-mac/2015-April/011420.html
> 
> This may help.
> Get R 3.2.0-patched or even the release candidate for R 3.2.1
> ————————————————————————

 The error I am getting was from the most recent R 3.2.0 downloaded yesterday. There is no 3.2.0-Patched for Mavericks.  The release candidate, R 3.2.1 RC, is marked on the ATT Research webpage as failing Make and it indeed fails to launch. I would NOT recommend that anyone accept that advice. 

But maybe it is a Mac-specific problem. When I remove the crippled R 3.2.1 RC and reinstall the R 3.2.0 and run from a Terminal window I do not get the help.search() error. So copying to R SIG Mac, and will not copy R-help on any further efforts.

-- 
David.



> 
> Berend
> 
> 
>> On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 8:42 AM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> On Jun 13, 2015, at 7:41 AM, Ramnik Bansal wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Getting following error in using help.search
>>>> 
>>>>> utils::help.search("linear models")
>>>> Error in help(db[i, "topic"], package = db[i, "Package"], lib.loc =
>>> lib,  :
>>>> 'topic' should be a name, length-one character vector or reserved word
>>> 
>>> I first tried this in a Mac running the SL version for R 3.1.2 and did not
>>> get this error. I updated my Mavericks laptop to R 3.2.0 and can now
>>> reproduce this error. It does not seem to depend on having a space in the
>>> argument. It seems to be thrown by this segment of code in the
>>> `help()`-function:
>>> 
>>>  ischar <- tryCatch(is.character(topic) && length(topic) ==
>>>      1L, error = identity)
>>>  if (inherits(ischar, "error"))
>>>      ischar <- FALSE
>>>  if (!ischar) {
>>>      reserved <- c("TRUE", "FALSE", "NULL", "Inf", "NaN",
>>>          "NA", "NA_integer_", "NA_real_", "NA_complex_", "NA_character_")
>>>      stopic <- deparse(substitute(topic))
>>>      if (!is.name(substitute(topic)) && !stopic %in% reserved)
>>>          stop("'topic' should be a name, length-one character vector or
>>> reserved word")
>>> 
>>> If gone through the `help.search` function code and cannot find where the
>>> `help` function is actually called. This seems unlikely to be a
>>> Mac-specific problem.
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> example(help.search)
>>>> 
>>>> hlp.sr> help.search("linear models")    # In case you forgot how to fit
>>>> linear
>>>> Error in help(db[i, "topic"], package = db[i, "Package"], lib.loc =
>>> lib,  :
>>>> 'topic' should be a name, length-one character vector or reserved word
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> How to sort this?
>>>> 
>>>>     [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>> 
>>> David Winsemius
>>> Alameda, CA, USA
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
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>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 

David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA

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