R: Generate a Shell for Documentation of a Package

promptPackage {utils} | R Documentation

## Generate a Shell for Documentation of a Package

### Description

Generates a shell of documentation for an installed or source package.

### Usage

    promptPackage(package, lib.loc = NULL, filename = NULL,
                  name = NULL, final = FALSE)

### Arguments

`package` | a `character` string with the name of an installed or source package to be documented.
`lib.loc` | a character vector describing the location of R library trees to search through, or `NULL`. The default value of `NULL` corresponds to all libraries currently known. For a source package this should specify the parent directory of the package's sources.
`filename` | usually, a connection or a character string giving the name of the file to which the documentation shell should be written. The default corresponds to a file whose name is `name` followed by `".Rd"`. Can also be `NA` (see below).
`name` | a character string specifying the name of the help topic, typically of the form <pkg>-package.
`final` | a logical value indicating whether to attempt to create a usable version of the help topic, rather than just a shell.

### Details

Unless `filename` is `NA`, a documentation shell for `package` is written to the file specified by `filename`, and a message about this is given.

If `filename` is `NA`, a list-style representation of the documentation shell is created and returned. Writing the shell to a file amounts to `cat(unlist(x), file = filename, sep = "\n")`, where `x` is the list-style representation.

If `final` is `TRUE`, the generated documentation will not include the place-holder slots for manual editing, it will be usable as-is. In most cases a manually edited file is preferable (but `final = TRUE` is certainly less work).

### Value

If `filename` is `NA`, a list-style representation of the documentation shell. Otherwise, the name of the file written to is returned invisibly.

### See Also

`prompt`

### Examples

    filename <- tempfile()
    promptPackage("utils", filename = filename)
    file.show(filename)
    unlink(filename)

[Package utils version 2.15.1 Index]