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From Installing older version of R package, I am able to download the source for dplyr version 0.4.3. I would like to see the helpfile for the function collect from this release, as I believe its behaviour has changed in 0.5.

How do I see the old manual/help file without installing the old package?

Community
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Alex
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  • You can go to the [archive page](https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/dplyr/) for the package, and download the package zip file for whichever version you wish. Then unzip the file and look in the `man` folder to find the help for each function. – eipi10 Sep 27 '16 at 00:02
  • Thanks, but this is unformatted roxygen code. – Alex Sep 27 '16 at 00:03
  • True. But you can open the file in an RStudio sesson and click "Preview" to see a formatted version in the Help window. There may be better/easier ways, but I was able to download the zip file and view a formatted help page within a couple of minutes. – eipi10 Sep 27 '16 at 00:06
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    FYI, for the `collect` help, look in the `compute.Rd` file, as `compute`, `collect`, and `collapse` have a single help page called `compute.Rd`. – eipi10 Sep 27 '16 at 00:13
  • thanks, it took a while to find that. Again it would be very good to be able to access an archived version of the manual. – Alex Sep 27 '16 at 00:14
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    For changes between versions, you can also check the [News page](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/dplyr/news.html) for the package. – eipi10 Sep 27 '16 at 00:15
  • Helpful as well, but this one was undocumented, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/39714170/how-do-i-see-the-help-for-this-method – Alex Sep 27 '16 at 00:20
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    If it's on GitHub, the most direct route would be to look at the history for the code. – alistaire Sep 27 '16 at 00:57

2 Answers2

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I'm surprised that no one mentioned this:

compute in dplyr 0.4.3

compute in dplyr 0.5.0

  1. find package in RDocumentation
  2. select package and version
  3. search function for documentation. Though collect is actually documented in compute. Maybe you would need a google search to find about this if you didn't know it beforehand.
dracodoc
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Search https://www.rdocumentation.org/ for the package or search the function.

Hope it helps.

Peter Chung
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