help(topic, data, package = .library(), lib.loc = .lib.loc) ?name ?data(name) ?package(name) ?library(lib.loc)
topic, name
| A name or character string on which documentation is desired. |
data
| A name or character string specifying a data set on which information is sought. |
package
| A name or character vector giving the packages to look into for documentation. By default, all packages in the search path are used. |
lib.loc
| A character vector of directory names of R libraries. Defaults to all libraries currently known. |
name
can be
printed on-screen with either help(name)
or ?name
.
In the case of unary and binary operators and control-flow special
forms, the name may need to be be quoted.
?data(name)
provides information on the (first) data set named
name
. Additional arguments may be given to request specific
information. E.g., ?data(name, package = PKG)
only looks for
documentation on data set name in the packages specified by PKG
.
?package(name)
displays information on package name
,
typically by listing the most important user-level R objects it
contains. Equivalently, one could use library(help = name)
.
?library(lib.loc)
informs about the libraries specified by
lib.loc
, usually giving their location and the list of packages
available in them. Use library()
to obtain a list of all
available packages.
One can abbreviate the forms for obtaining information on data sets, packages and libraries, see the examples below.
help.start()
which opens the HTML version of the R
documentation;
data
, library
, methods
.