package.contents            package: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!

