R: Run an Examples Section from the Online Help

example {base}

R Documentation

Run an Examples Section from the Online Help

Description

Run all the R code from the Examples part of R's online help topic topic with two possible exceptions, dontrun and testonly, see Details below.

Usage

example(topic, package = .packages(), lib.loc = NULL,
        local = FALSE, echo = TRUE, verbose = getOption("verbose"),
        prompt.echo = paste(abbreviate(topic, 6),"> ", sep=""))

Arguments

topic

name or string constant: the online help topic the examples of which should be run.

package

a character vector with package names. By default, all packages in the search path are used.

lib.loc

a character vector of directory names of R libraries, or NULL. The default value of NULL corresponds to all libraries currently known. If the default is used, the loaded packages are searched before the libraries.

local

logical: if TRUE evaluate locally, if FALSE evaluate in the workspace.

echo

logical; if TRUE, show the R input when sourcing.

verbose

logical; if TRUE, show even more when running example code.

prompt.echo

character; gives the prompt to be used if echo = TRUE.

Details

If lib.loc is not specified, the packages are searched for amongst those already loaded, then in the specified libraries. If lib.loc is specified, they are searched for only in the specified libraries, even if they are already loaded from another library.

An attempt is made to load the package before running the examples, but this will not replace a package loaded from another location.

If local=TRUE objects are not created in the workspace and so not available for examination after example completes: on the other hand they cannot clobber objects of the same name in the workspace.

As detailed in the manual Writing R Extensions, the author of the help page can markup parts of the examples for two exception rules

dontrun: encloses code that should not be run.
testonly: encloses code that is invisible on help pages, but will be run both by the package checking tools, and the example() function.

Value

(the value of the last evaluated expression).

Note

The examples can be many small files. On some file systems it is desirable to save space, and the files in the ‘R-ex’ directory of an installed package can be zipped up as a zip archive ‘Rex.zip’.

Author(s)

Martin Maechler and others

Examples

example(InsectSprays)
## force use of the standard package eda:
example("smooth", package="eda", lib.loc=.Library)

[Package base version 1.7.1 ]