help itself doesn't return anything useful. To get the help text, you can read the contents of the help database for a package, and parse that.
extract_help <- function(pkg, fn = NULL, to = c("txt", "html", "latex", "ex"))
{
to <- match.arg(to)
rdbfile <- file.path(find.package(pkg), "help", pkg)
rdb <- tools:::fetchRdDB(rdbfile, key = fn)
convertor <- switch(to,
txt = tools::Rd2txt,
html = tools::Rd2HTML,
latex = tools::Rd2latex,
ex = tools::Rd2ex
)
f <- function(x) capture.output(convertor(x))
if(is.null(fn)) lapply(rdb, f) else f(rdb)
}
pkg is a character string giving the name of a package
fn is a character string giving the name of a function within that package. If it is left as NULL, then the help for all the functions in that package gets returned.
to converts the help file to txt, tml or whatever.
Example usage:
#Everything in utils
extract_help("utils")
#just one function
extract_help("utils", "browseURL")
#convert to html instead
extract_help("utils", "browseURL", "html")
#a non-base package
extract_help("plyr")
