promptClass {methods} | R Documentation |
Assembles all relevant slot and method information for a class, with minimal markup for Rd processing; no QC facilities at present.
promptClass(clName, filename = NULL, type = "class", keywords = "classes", where = topenv(parent.frame()))
clName |
a character string naming the class to be documented. |
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 the topic name for
the class documentation, followed by ".Rd" . Can also be
NA (see below). |
type |
the documentation type to be declared in the output file. |
keywords |
the keywords to include in the shell of the
documentation. The keyword "classes" should be one of
them. |
where |
where to look for the definition of the class and of methods that use it. |
The class definition is found on the search list. Using that definition, information about classes extended and slots is determined.
In addition, the currently available generics with methods for this
class are found (using getGenerics
). Note that these
methods need not be in the same environment as the class definition; in
particular, this part of the output may depend on which packages are
currently in the search list.
As with other prompt-style functions, unless filename
is
NA
, the documentation shell is written to a file, and a message
about this is given. The file will need editing to give information
about the meaning of the class. The output of
promptClass
can only contain information from the metadata
about the formal definition and how it is used.
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 filename
is NA
, a list-style representation of the
documentation shell. Otherwise, the name of the file written to is
returned invisibly.
VJ Carey stvjc@channing.harvard.edu and John Chambers
The functions in this package emulate the facility for classes and methods described in Programming with Data (John M. Chambers, Springer, 1998). See this book for further details and examples.
prompt
for documentation of functions,
promptMethods
for documentation of method definitions.
For processing of the edited documentation, either use R CMD
Rdconv
, or include the edited file in the ‘man’
subdirectory of a package.
## Not run: > promptClass("track") A shell of class documentation has been written to the file "track-class.Rd". ## End(Not run)