% File src/library/utils/man/promptPackage.Rd % Part of the R package, http://www.R-project.org % Copyright 1995-2010 R Core Team % Distributed under GPL 2 or later \name{promptPackage} \alias{promptPackage} \title{Generate a Shell for Documentation of a Package} \description{ Generates a shell of documentation for an installed or source package. } \usage{ promptPackage(package, lib.loc = NULL, filename = NULL, name = NULL, final = FALSE) } \arguments{ \item{package}{a \code{\link{character}} string with the name of an \emph{installed} or \emph{source} package to be documented.} \item{lib.loc}{a character vector describing the location of \R library trees to search through, or \code{NULL}. The default value of \code{NULL} corresponds to all libraries currently known. For a source package this should specify the parent directory of the package's sources.} \item{filename}{usually, a \link{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 \code{name} followed by \code{".Rd"}. Can also be \code{NA} (see below).} \item{name}{a character string specifying the name of the help topic, typically of the form \samp{-package}.} \item{final}{a logical value indicating whether to attempt to create a usable version of the help topic, rather than just a shell.} } \value{ If \code{filename} is \code{NA}, a list-style representation of the documentation shell. Otherwise, the name of the file written to is returned invisibly. } \details{ Unless \code{filename} is \code{NA}, a documentation shell for \code{package} is written to the file specified by \code{filename}, and a message about this is given. If \code{filename} is \code{NA}, a list-style representation of the documentation shell is created and returned. Writing the shell to a file amounts to \code{cat(unlist(x), file = filename, sep = "\\n")}, where \code{x} is the list-style representation. If \code{final} is \code{TRUE}, the generated documentation will not include the place-holder slots for manual editing, it will be usable as-is. In most cases a manually edited file is preferable (but \code{final = TRUE} is certainly less work). } \seealso{\code{\link{prompt}}} \examples{\donttest{ filename <- tempfile() promptPackage("utils", filename = filename) file.show(filename) unlink(filename) }} \keyword{documentation}