The R help function

In R information about individual functions can be found on the function manual page including:

• description: what the function does
• usage: shows the syntax of the function including all arguments - this is a generalised form of how you would use the function
• arguments: of the function. These are all the things you can customise in the function
• details and values: give some additional information about the function
• examples: of how the function is run. You will be able to copy and paste these examples into R/RStudio to run yourself

You can access the help page of a function in a number of ways

• To open up the help page within R/RStudio using the help command :

help(insert_function_name)
# an example for print()

help(print)

• an equivalent command is to use the help operator ?:

?(print)

• both commands will open up the print function in a web page in windows (or the manual page inside the terminal in Linux)

• In your script, type and run

print("Hello world")
 
#output below
> print("hello world")
[1] "hello world"