Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In rare cases, you may need to build R from scratch. You might have an obscure, un-
supported version of Unix; or you might have special considerations regarding per-
formance or configuration. The build procedure on Linux or Unix is quite standard.
Download the tarball from the home page of your CRAN mirror; it's called something
like R-2.12.1.tar.gz , except the “2.12.1” will be replaced by the latest version. Unpack
the tarball, look for a file called INSTALL , and follow the directions.
See Also
R in a Nutshell contains more details for downloading and installing R, including in-
structions for building the Windows and OS X versions. Perhaps the ultimate guide,
though, is R Installation and Administration ( http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R
-admin.html ), available on CRAN, which describes how to build and install R on a
variety of platforms.
This recipe is about installing the base package. Use the install.packages function to
install add-on packages from CRAN.
1.2 Getting Help on a Function
Problem
You want to know more about a function that is installed on your machine.
Solution
Use help to display the documentation for the function:
> help( functionname )
Use args for a quick reminder of the function arguments:
> args( functionname )
Use example to see examples of using the function:
> example( functionname )
Discussion
I present many R functions in this topic. Every R function has more bells and whistles
than I can possibly describe. If a function catches your interest, I strongly suggest read-
ing the help page for that function. One of its bells or whistles might be very useful to
you.
Suppose you want to know more about the mean function. Use the help function like
this:
> help(mean)
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search