The R help function

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

Information: Print()

According to the manual, the print command has the usage

print(x..)

Function_name(arg1)
where x is “Hello world”