How to write contents of help to a file from within R?

Question

I\'d like to be able to write the contents of a help file in R to a file from within R. The following works from the command-line:

• R --slave -e \'library

Answer 1

Looks like the two functions you would need are tools:::Rd2txt and utils:::.getHelpFile. This prints the help file to the console, but you may need to fiddle with the arguments to get it to write to a file in the way you want.

For example:

hs <- help(survey)
tools:::Rd2txt(utils:::.getHelpFile(as.character(hs)))

Since these functions aren't currently exported, I would not recommend you rely on them for any production code. It would be better to use them as a guide to create your own stable implementation.