apropos() returns a character vector giving the names of
objects in the search list matching (as a regular expression)
what.
find() returns where objects of a given name can be found.
apropos(what, where = FALSE, ignore.case = TRUE, mode = "any")find(what, mode = "any", numeric = FALSE, simple.words = TRUE)
character string. For simple.words = FALSE
the name of an object; otherwise
a regular expression to match object names against.
a logical indicating whether positions in the search list should also be returned
logical indicating if the search should be
case-insensitive, TRUE by default.
character; if not "any", only objects whose
mode equals mode are searched.
logical; if TRUE, the what argument is
only searched as a whole word.
For apropos, a character vector sorted by name. For
where = TRUE this has names giving the (numerical) positions on
the search path.
For find, either a character vector of environment names or
(for numeric = TRUE) a numerical vector of positions on the
search path with names the names of the corresponding environments.
If mode != "any" only those objects which are of mode mode
are considered.
find is a different user interface for a similar task to
apropos. By default (simple.words == TRUE),
only whole names are matched. Unlike apropos, matching is
always case-sensitive.
Unlike the default behaviour of ls, names which
begin with a . are included (and these are often
‘internal’ objects --- as from R 3.4.0 most such are excluded).
glob2rx to convert wildcard patterns to regular expressions.
objects for listing objects from one place,
help.search for searching the help system,
search for the search path.
# NOT RUN {
require(stats)
# }
# NOT RUN {
<!-- %% some of these have enormous output that varies a lot by version -->
# }
# NOT RUN {
apropos("lm")
# }
# NOT RUN {
apropos("GLM") # several
apropos("GLM", ignore.case = FALSE) # not one
apropos("lq")
cor <- 1:pi
find("cor") #> ".GlobalEnv" "package:stats"
find("cor", numeric = TRUE) # numbers with these names
find("cor", numeric = TRUE, mode = "function") # only the second one
rm(cor)
# }
# NOT RUN {
apropos(".", mode="list") # a long list
# }
# NOT RUN {
# need a DOUBLE backslash '\\' (in case you don't see it anymore)
apropos("\\[")
# }
# NOT RUN {
# everything % not diff-able
length(apropos("."))
# those starting with 'pr'
apropos("^pr")
# the 1-letter things
apropos("^.$")
# the 1-2-letter things
apropos("^..?$")
# the 2-to-4 letter things
apropos("^.{2,4}$")
# the 8-and-more letter things
apropos("^.{8,}$")
table(nchar(apropos("^.{8,}$")))
# }