apropos {base} | R Documentation

## Find Objects by (Partial) Name

### Description

`apropos` returns a vector of character strings giving the names of all objects in the search list matching `what`.

`find` is a different user interface to the same task as `apropos`.

### Usage

    apropos(what, where = FALSE, mode = "any")
    find(what, mode = "any", numeric. = FALSE, simple.words = TRUE)

### Arguments

`what` | name of an object, or regular expression to match against
`where, numeric.` | a logical indicating whether positions in the search list should also be returned
`mode` | character; if not `"any"`, only objects who's `mode` equals `mode` are searched.
`simple.words` | logical; if `TRUE`, the `what` argument is only searched as whole only word.

### Details

`apropos` returns a vector of character strings giving the names of all objects in the search list matching `what`. If `mode != "any"` only those objects which are of mode `mode` are considered. If `where` is `TRUE`, their position in the search list is returned as their names attribute.

`find` is a different user interface to the same task as `apropos`. However, by default (`simple.words == TRUE`), only full words are searched.

### Author(s)

Kurt Hornik and Martin Maechler (May 1997).

### See Also

`objects` for listing objects from one place, `help.search` for searching the help system, `search` for the search path.

### Examples

    apropos("lm")
    apropos(ls)
    apropos("lq")

    lm <- 1:pi
    find(lm)        ##> ".GlobalEnv"   "package:base"
    find(lm, num=T) ## .. numbers with these names
    find(lm, num=T, mode="function")# only the second one
    rm(lm)

    apropos(".", mode="list")

    # need a DOUBLE backslash `\\' (in case you don't see it anymore)
    apropos("\\[")

    # everything
    length(apropos("."))

    # those starting with `pr'
    apropos("^pr")

    # the 1-letter things
    apropos("^.$")
    # the 1-2-letter things
    apropos("^..?$")
    # the 2-to-4 letter things
    apropos("^.{2,4}$")

    # the 8-and-more letter things
    apropos("^.{8,}$")
    table(nchar(apropos("^.{8,}$")))

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