apropos {utils} | R Documentation

## Find Objects by (Partial) Name

### Description

`apropos` returns a character vector 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 word.

### Details

If `mode != "any"` only those objects which are of mode `mode` are considered. If `where` is `TRUE`, the positions in the search list are returned as the names attribute.

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

### 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

    ## Not run: apropos("lm")
    apropos(ls)
    apropos("lq")

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

    ## Not run: apropos(".", mode="list") # a long list

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

    ## Not run: # 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,}$")
    table(nchar(apropos("^.{8,}$")))
    ## End(Not run)

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