R: Package Contents and Description

package.contents {base} | R Documentation

## Package Contents and Description

### Description

Parses and returns the ``CONTENTS`' and ``DESCRIPTION`' file of a package.

### Usage

    package.contents(pkg, lib.loc = NULL)
    package.description(pkg, lib.loc = NULL, fields = NULL)

### Arguments

`pkg` | a character string with the package name.
`lib.loc` | a character vector describing the location of R library trees to search through, or `NULL`. The default value of `NULL` corresponds to all libraries currently known.
`fields` | a character vector giving the tags of fields to return (if other fields occur in the file they are ignored).

### Value

`package.contents` returns `NA` if there is no ``CONTENTS`' file for the given package; otherwise, a character matrix with column names `c("Entry", "Keywords", "Description")` and rows giving the corresponding entries in the CONTENTS data base for each Rd file in the package.
If a ``DESCRIPTION`' for the given package is found and can successfully be read, `package.description` returns a named character vector with the values of the (given) fields as elements and the tags as names. If not, it returns a named vector of `NA`s with the field tags as names if `fields` is not null, and `NA` otherwise.

### See Also

`read.dcf`

### Examples

    package.contents("mva")
    package.contents("mva")[, c("Entry", "Description")]

    package.description("ts")
    package.description("ts")[c("Package", "Version")]
    ## NOTE: No subscripting using `$' or abbreviated field tags!

[Package Contents]