R: Show R Manuals and Other Documentation

RShowDoc {utils} | R Documentation

## Show R Manuals and Other Documentation

### Description

Utility function to find and display R documentation.

### Usage

    RShowDoc(what, type = c("pdf", "html", "txt"), package)

### Arguments

`what` | a character string: see ‘Details’.
`type` | an optional character string giving the preferred format. Can be abbreviated.
`package` | an optional character string specifying the name of a package within which to look for documentation.

### Details

`what` can specify one of several different sources of documentation, including the R manuals (`R-admin`, `R-data`, `R-exts`, `R-intro`, `R-ints`, `R-lang`), `NEWS`, `COPYING` (the GPL licence), any of the licenses in ‘share/licenses’, `FAQ` (also available as `R-FAQ`), and the files in ‘R_HOME/doc’.

Only on Windows, the R for Windows FAQ is specified by `rw-FAQ`.

If `package` is supplied, documentation is looked for in the ‘doc’ and top-level directories of an installed package of that name.

If `what` is missing a brief usage message is printed.

The documentation types are tried in turn starting with the first specified in `type` (or `"pdf"` if none is specified).

### Value

A invisible character string given the path to the file found.

### See Also

For displaying regular help files, `help` (or `?`) and `help.start`.

For `type = "txt"`, `file.show` is used. `vignette`s are nicely viewed via `RShowDoc(*, package= . )`.

### Examples

    RShowDoc("R-lang")
    RShowDoc("FAQ", type = "html")
    RShowDoc("frame", package = "grid")
    RShowDoc("changes.txt", package = "grid")
    RShowDoc("NEWS", package = "MASS")

[Package utils version 4.0.5 Index]