This help topic is for R version 1.1. For the current version of R, try https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/base/html/ls.html
ls {base}R Documentation

List Objects

Description

ls and objects return a vector of character strings giving the names of the objects in the specified environment. When invoked with no argument at the top level prompt, ls shows what data sets and functions a user has defined. When invoked with no argument inside a function, ls returns the names of the functions local variables. This is useful in conjunction with browser.

Usage

ls(name, pos= -1, envir=pos.to.env(pos),
       all.names=FALSE, pattern)
objects(name, pos= -1, envir=pos.to.env(pos),
       all.names=FALSE, pattern)

Arguments

name

the name of an attached object appearing in the vector of names returned by search.

pos

the index of an attached object in the list returned by search. Defaults to the current environment.

envir

an evaluation environment. Defaults to the one corresponding to pos.

all.names

a logical value. If TRUE, all object names are returned. If FALSE, names which begin with a “.” are omitted.

pattern

an optional regular expression, see grep. Only names matching pattern are returned.

See Also

apropos (or find) for finding objects in the whole search path; grep for more details on “regular expressions”; class, methods, etc. for object-oriented programming.

Examples

.Ob <- 1
ls(pat="O")
ls(pat="O", all = T)    # also shows ".[foo]"

# shows an empty list because inside myfunc no variables are defined
myfunc <- function() {ls()}
myfunc()

# define a local variable inside myfunc
myfunc <- function() {y <- 1; ls()}
myfunc()                # shows "y"
[Package base version 1.1 ]