R: View or List Vignettes

vignette {utils} | R Documentation

## View or List Vignettes

### Description

View a specified vignette, or list the available ones.

### Usage

    vignette(topic, package = NULL, lib.loc = NULL, all = TRUE)

    ## S3 method for class 'vignette'
    print(x, ...)
    ## S3 method for class 'vignette'
    edit(name, ...)

### Arguments

`topic` | a character string giving the (base) name of the vignette to view. If omitted, all vignettes from all installed packages are listed.
`package` | a character vector with the names of packages to search through, or `NULL` in which "all" packages (as defined by argument `all`) are searched.
`lib.loc` | a character vector of directory names of R libraries, or `NULL`. The default value of `NULL` corresponds to all libraries currently known.
`all` | logical; if `TRUE` search all available packages in the library trees specified by `lib.loc`, and if `FALSE`, search only attached packages.
`x, name` | Object of class `vignette`.
`...` | Ignored by the `print` method, passed on to `file.edit` by the `edit` method.

### Details

Function `vignette` returns an object of the same class, the print method opens a viewer for it. Currently, only PDF versions of vignettes can be viewed. The program specified by the `pdfviewer` option is used for this. If several vignettes have PDF versions with base name identical to `topic`, the first one found is used.

If no topics are given, all available vignettes are listed. The corresponding information is returned in an object of class `"packageIQR"`.

The `edit` method extracts the R code from the vignette to a temporary file and opens the file in an editor (see `edit`). This makes it very easy to execute the commands line by line, modify them in any way you want to help you test variants, etc.. An alternative way of extracting the R code from the vignette is to run `Stangle` on the source code of the vignette, see the examples below.

### See Also

`browseVignettes` for an HTML-based vignette browser.

### Examples

    ## List vignettes from all *attached* packages
    vignette(all = FALSE)

    ## List vignettes from all *installed* packages (can take a long time!):
    vignette(all = TRUE)

    ## Not run:
    ## Open the grid intro vignette
    vignette("grid")

    ## The same
    v1 <- vignette("grid")
    print(v1)

    ## Now let us have a closer look at the code
    edit(v1)

    ## An alternative way of extracting the code,
    ## R file is written to current working directory
    Stangle(v1$file)

    ## A package can have more than one vignette (package grid has several):
    vignette(package="grid")
    vignette("rotated")
    ## The same, but without searching for it:
    vignette("rotated", package="grid")

    ## End(Not run)

[Package utils version 2.15.1 Index]