The R Project SVN R

% File src/library/methods/man/promptMethods.Rd

% Part of the R package, https://www.R-project.org

% Copyright 1995-2018 R Core Team

% Distributed under GPL 2 or later

\name{promptMethods}

\alias{promptMethods}

\title{ Generate a Shell for Documentation of Formal Methods }

\description{

  Generates a shell of documentation for the methods of a generic

  function.

}

\usage{

promptMethods(f, filename = NULL, methods)

}

\arguments{

  \item{f}{a character string naming the generic function whose methods

    are to be documented.}

  \item{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 the coded topic name for these methods

    (currently, \code{f} followed by \code{"-methods.Rd"}).  Can also be

    \code{FALSE} or \code{NA} (see below).}

  \item{methods}{optional \code{"\linkS4class{listOfMethods}"} object giving the methods to be

    documented.  By default, the first methods object for this generic

    is used (for example, if the current global environment has some

    methods for \code{f}, these would be documented).

    If this argument is supplied, it is likely to be

    \code{\link{findMethods}(f, where)}, with \code{where} some package

    containing methods for \code{f}.}

}

\value{

  If \code{filename} is \code{FALSE}, the text generated;

  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{

  If \code{filename} is \code{FALSE}, the text created is returned,

  presumably to be inserted some other documentation file, such as the

  documentation of the generic function itself (see

  \code{\link{prompt}}).

  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.

  Otherwise, the documentation shell is written to the file specified by

  \code{filename}.

}

\seealso{

  \code{\link{prompt}} and

  \code{\link{promptClass}}

}

\references{

 Chambers, John M. (2008)

 \emph{Software for Data Analysis: Programming with R}

  Springer.  (For the R version.)

 Chambers, John M. (1998)

 \emph{Programming with Data}

 Springer (For the original S4 version.)

}

\keyword{programming}

\keyword{methods}