promptMethods {methods} | R Documentation

## Generate a Shell for Documentation of Formal Methods

### Description

Generates a shell of documentation for the methods of a generic function.

### Usage

    promptMethods(f, filename = NULL, methods)

### Arguments

`f` | a character string naming the generic function whose methods are to be documented.
`filename` | usually, a connection or a character string giving the name of the file to which the documentation shell should be written. The default corresponds to the coded topic name for these methods (currently, `f` followed by `"-methods.Rd"`). Can also be `FALSE` or `NA` (see below).
`methods` | optional `"listOfMethods"` object giving the methods to be documented. By default, the first methods object for this generic is used (for example, if the current global environment has some methods for `f`, these would be documented). If this argument is supplied, it is likely to be `findMethods(f, where)`, with `where` some package containing methods for `f`.

### Details

If `filename` is `FALSE`, the text created is returned, presumably to be inserted some other documentation file, such as the documentation of the generic function itself (see `prompt`).

If `filename` is `NA`, a list-style representation of the documentation shell is created and returned. Writing the shell to a file amounts to `cat(unlist(x), file = filename, sep = "\n")`, where `x` is the list-style representation.

Otherwise, the documentation shell is written to the file specified by `filename`.

### Value

If `filename` is `FALSE`, the text generated; if `filename` is `NA`, a list-style representation of the documentation shell. Otherwise, the name of the file written to is returned invisibly.

### References

Chambers, John M. (2008) Software for Data Analysis: Programming with R Springer. (For the R version.)

Chambers, John M. (1998) Programming with Data Springer (For the original S4 version.)

### See Also

`prompt` and `promptClass`

[Package methods version 3.6.1 Index]