directing print.packageInfo to a file

Gabor Grothendieck writes:

print.packageInfo does not print to the console, it uses file.show.
For example, on R 1.9.1 patched on Windows XP:

require(chron)

[1] TRUE

capture.output(print.packageInfo(help(package = chron)), file = "/abc.txt")

NULL

length(readLines("/abc.txt"))

[1] 0

Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik@wu-wien.ac.at> writes:

Gabor Grothendieck writes:

There was a discussion on r-help of getting the output from
print.packageInfo into a file. Spencer and I have added a file=
argument to print.packageInfo for consideration in R. Had this
been available it would have simplified the answer to that
thread. If the file= argument is used then the packageInfo
information is sent to the file specified rather than displayed
using file.show .

What is wrong with

     capture.output(print.packageInfo(x, ...), file = NULL)

for what you want?

-k

print.packageInfo <- function (x, ..., file = NULL)
{
if (!inherits(x, "packageInfo"))
stop("wrong class")
outFile <- if (is.null(file))
tempfile("RpackageInfo")
else
file
outConn <- file(outFile, open = "w")
vignetteMsg <- paste("Further information is available in the following ",
"vignettes in directory ", sQuote(file.path(x$path, "doc")),
":", sep = "")
headers <- c("", "Description:\n\n", "Index:\n\n", paste(paste(strwrap
(vignetteMsg),
collapse = "\n"), "\n\n", sep = ""))
footers <- c("\n", "\n", "\n", "")
formatDocEntry <- function(entry) {
if (is.list(entry) || is.matrix(entry))
formatDL(entry, style = "list")
else entry
}
for (i in which(!sapply(x$info, is.null))) {
writeLines(headers[i], outConn, sep = "")
writeLines(formatDocEntry(x$info[[i]]), outConn)
writeLines(footers[i], outConn, sep = "")
}
close(outConn)
if (is.null(file))
file.show(outFile, delete.file = TRUE, title = paste
("Documentation for package",
sQuote(x$name)))
invisible(x)
}

Gabor Grothendieck writes:

print.packageInfo does not print to the console, it uses file.show.
For example, on R 1.9.1 patched on Windows XP:

require(chron)

[1] TRUE

capture.output(print.packageInfo(help(package = chron)), file = "/abc.txt")

NULL

length(readLines("/abc.txt"))

[1] 0

But file.show() can be tuned by playing with options(pager).

In your case, something like

  oop <- options(pager = function(file, ...) writeLines(readLines(file)))
  capture.output(print.packageInfo(help(package = "stats")),
	         file = "abc.txt")
  options(oop)

gives

R> length(readLines("abc.txt"))
[1] 345