Online Information on All Sorts of Objects

DESCRIPTION:

Provides you with information on functions, objects, classes, and other topics.

USAGE:

? 
?name 
special ? name
?object 
?name(object, ...) 
?methods(name) 

OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS:

name
a name or a character string giving the name of a function or operator. If omitted, documentation on ? is given (this documentation).
special
restrict the documentation to this special type. Do not type the word special; use one of the following special arguments: library, function, class, or method, for documentation on libraries, functions, or S-PLUS classes. These prefixes are useful when the same topic appears in more than one special situation, for example, the function matrix versus the class matrix.
name(object, ...)
a proposed call, typically to a generic function, with the first argument being some (existing) S-PLUS object. Documentation will be offered on the function name itself and on all methods for name that might be used when the call is actually evaluated. However, the call is notevaluated: this use of ? is usually to decide what would happen ifsome proposed computation were done.
methods(name)
all possible methods for function name will be presented, based on the functions available on the current search list. This is equivalent to using the call method ? name.

DETAILS:

In the cases where documentation is offered on all classes or methods, the options are presented to the user via the menu function. All the possibilities (as a character vector) are returned (invisibly) as the value of ?. Not all the proposed documentation need exist: ? does not check for the existence of the documentation when it constructs the menu.

SEE ALSO:

, , .

EXAMPLES:

?plot      # help on plot function 
class?timeDate  #help on the timeDate class
?"+"    # addition (and other arithmetic) Note the need for quotes 
?plot(myfit)    # tell me about the plot methods for myfit 
method?plot # tell me about plot methods