Ask for Help

Alternative channels for solving issues.

There are different ways to solve issues, depending on the type of the problem faced during coding. You don’t know the source of an error message? Do you suspect a bug in the used packages? Are you requesting further development of a package? Such questions may be proper in some channels but in other not. Here some hints.

Getting Help in R

The basic function help() can be used to browse the documentation of a function or data set but sometimes also documentation o a package. An alias is the operator ? followed by the symbol of the function or data set.

To search by a topic, you can use help.search() or ??, while help.start() takes you to the home of the R help pages.

Further support is offered by demos (demo()) and vignettes (functions browsevignette() and vignette()). Furthermore there is a huge number of useful tutorials available on the Internet.

Here some example of code asking for support.

# Documentation of a function
?mean

# Search by topic
??"linear regression"

# See a demo
demo("graphics")

# See a vignette
vignette("ggplot2-specs")

# Search forum at r-project.org
RSiteSearch("logistic regression")

Channels in Internet

One of the most common places to ask for questions related to R and other programming languages is stack overflow. This service is for free and you can browse in the discussions without any membership. For asking questions you have to register and there is a system of reputation metrics that is restrictive at the beginning but rewards your engagement in the network.

Social media are also alternatives for askig and discussing topics related with your work in R. They may also offer the option of creating groups for such discussions. Here a personal recommendation is the grou Ecology in R at facebook.

Any online searching machine may also drive you to diverse forums and tutorials on the Internet.

In the especial case that you suspect a bug in a package or wish new features in existing packages, many of them may be developed at DevOps platforms such as GitHub and GitLab. In such cases you can report issues after registering. Alternative you can contact developers per e-mail.

Good Practices

Here a personal check-list for asking questions and reporting issues.

• Take your time searching for existing answers in internet
• KESS (keep it simple stupid)
• Use minimal reproducible examples
• Be polite
• Tag, comment or report the solution
• Use Markdown if suitable