Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0804251931290.23000@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
Date: 2008-04-25T18:47:37Z
From: Brian Ripley
Subject: RFC: What should ?foo do?
In-Reply-To: <eb555e660804251054kaabb1c4r237007ff5703ca5f@mail.gmail.com>
On Fri, 25 Apr 2008, Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
> For what it's worth, I use ?foo mostly to look up usage of functions
> that I know I want to use, and find it perfect for that (one benefit
> over help() is that completion works for ?). The only thing I miss is
> the ability to do the equivalent of help("foo", package = "bar");
> ?bar::foo gives the help page for "::". Perhaps that would be
> something to consider for addition.
That fits most naturally with the (somewhat technical) idea that bar::foo
becomes a symbol and not a function call. I believe that several of think
that is in principle a better idea, but no one has as yet (AFAIK) explored
the ramifications.
However, 5 mins looking at the sources suggests that it is easy to do.
--
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595