getAnywhere              package:utils              R Documentation

Retrieve an R Object, Including from a Name Space

Description:

     These functions locates all objects with name matching its
     argument, whether visible on the search path, registered as an S3
     method or in a name space but not exported. 'getAnywhere()'
     returns the objects and 'argsAnywhere()' returns the arguments of
     any objects that are functions.

Usage:

     getAnywhere(x)
     argsAnywhere(x)

Arguments:

       x: a character string or name.

Details:

     The function looks at all loaded name spaces, whether or not they
     are associated with a package on the search list.

     Where functions are found as an S3 method, an attempt is made to
     find which name space registered them.  This may not be correct,
     especially if a name space is unloaded.

Value:

     For 'getAnywhere()' an object of class '"getAnywhere"'.  This is a
     list with components 

    name: the name searched for.

    objs: a list of objects found

   where: a character vector explaining where the object(s) were found

 visible: logical: is the object visible

    dups: logical: is the object identical to one earlier in the list.


     Normally the structure will be hidden by the 'print' method. There
     is a '[' method to extract one or more of the objects found.

     For 'argsAnywhere()' one or more argument lists as returned by
     'args'.

See Also:

     'get',  'getFromNamespace', 'args'

Examples:

     getAnywhere("format.dist")
     getAnywhere("simpleLoess") # not exported from stats
     argsAnywhere(format.dist)

