Figure out what version of R a function was introduced in

Question

Is there a way to find out what version of R certain functions were introduced in? For example regmatches is a useful function but it is fairly new and I believe it was int

Answer 1

You can use the SVN repository:

edd@max:~/svn/r-devel/src/library/base/man$ svn log regmatches.Rd 
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r57006 | hornik | 2011-09-14 14:04:21 -0500 (Wed, 14 Sep 2011) | 1 line

Improve example.
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r56997 | hornik | 2011-09-12 15:16:03 -0500 (Mon, 12 Sep 2011) | 1 line

Document regmatches replacement function.
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r56893 | hornik | 2011-09-02 05:31:01 -0500 (Fri, 02 Sep 2011) | 1 line

Add first version of regmatches replacement function.
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r56818 | hornik | 2011-08-29 02:49:17 -0500 (Mon, 29 Aug 2011) | 1 line

Spelling.
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r56752 | hornik | 2011-08-18 01:40:07 -0500 (Thu, 18 Aug 2011) | 1 line

Add regmatches().
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edd@max:~/svn/r-devel/src/library/base/man$ 

I applied svn log to the manual page as I didn't immediately see the R file the function is defined in; the command would work the same way there...