R: Find Objects by (Partial) Name

apropos {base}

R Documentation

Find Objects by (Partial) Name

Description

apropos returns a vector of character strings giving the names of all objects in the search list matching what. If mode != "any" only those objects which are of mode mode are considered. If where is TRUE, their position in the search list is returned as their names attribute.

find is a different user interface to the same task as apropos. However, by default (simple.words == TRUE), only full words are searched.

Usage

apropos(what, where = FALSE, mode = "any")
find(what, mode = "any", numeric. = FALSE, simple.words = TRUE)

Arguments

what

name of an object, or regular expression to match against

where, numeric.

a logical indicating whether positions in the search list should also be returned

mode

character; if not "any", only objects who's mode(.) equals mode are searched.

simple.words

logical; if TRUE, the what argument is only searched as whole only word.

Author(s)

Kurt Hornik and Martin Maechler (May 1997).

Examples

apropos("lm")
apropos(ls)
apropos("lq")

lm <- 1:pi
find(lm)        ##> ".GlobalEnv"   "package:base"
find(lm, num=T) ## .. numbers with these names
find(lm, num=T, mode="function")# only the second one
rm(lm)

apropos(".", mode="list")

# need a DOUBLE backslash `\\' (in case you don't see it anymore)
apropos("\\[")

# everything
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,}$")
table(nchar(apropos("^.{8,}$")))