devtools (version 1.1)

help: Drop-in replacements for help and ? functions

Description

The ? and help functions are replacements for functions of the same name in the utils package. They are made available when a package is loaded with load_all.

Usage

# help(topic, package = NULL, ...)
# ?e2
# e1?e2

Arguments

topic

A name or character string specifying the help topic.

package

A name or character string specifying the package in which to search for the help topic. If NULL, seach all packages.

...

Additional arguments to pass to help.

e1

First argument to pass along to utils::`?`.

e2

Second argument to pass along to utils::`?`.

Details

The ? function is a replacement for ? from the utils package. It will search for help in devtools-loaded packages first, then in regular packages.

The help function is a replacement for help from the utils package. If package is not specified, it will search for help in devtools-loaded packages first, then in regular packages. If package is specified, then it will search for help in devtools-loaded packages or regular packages, as appropriate.

Examples

# This would load devtools and look at the help for load_all, if currently
# in the devtools source directory.
load_all()
?load_all
help("load_all")

# To see the help pages for utils::help and utils::`?`:
help("help", "utils")
help("?", "utils")

# Examples demonstrating the multiple ways of supplying arguments
# NB: you can't do pkg <- "ggplot2"; help("ggplot2", pkg)
help(lm)
help(lm, stats)
help(lm, 'stats')
help('lm')
help('lm', stats)
help('lm', 'stats')
help(package = stats)
help(package = 'stats')
topic <- "lm"
help(topic)
help(topic, stats)
help(topic, 'stats')