Hi -- Sorry, I didn't realize that your post was split between the subject and the body. It seemed to me that you just sent out a statement of fact (no documentation) which made it look like you wanted someone to document this for you. I didn't realize the real question was embedded in the subject line. Apologies for the oversight on my part, -steve On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Steve Lianoglou <mailinglist.honeypot at="" gmail.com=""> wrote: > Hi, > > On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 11:24 AM, wang peter <wng.peter at="" gmail.com=""> wrote: >> i tried >> >>> help(ShortRead:::.freqSequences) >> Error in help(ShortRead:::.freqSequences) : >> 'topic' should be a name, length-one character vector or reserved word >> >>> help(.freqSequences) >> No documentation for ?.freqSequences? in specified packages and libraries: >> you could try ???.freqSequences? >> >> nothing found > > ... and none is required. > > Note that the author(s) of ShortRead are not making this function > available for general consumption -- it is a helper function for them. > > If it were available for you to use, it would be loaded in your > workspace when you call `library(ShortRead)`. This is why you have to > fish the function out of the ShortRead package with `:::` in order to > get a handle on it. > > Also, in general, you'll find that people prefix function names (vars, > etc.) with a "." when they don't really want people to call it > directly. > > So, to recap: you can use it at your own risk, but you shouldn't > expect someone to support you in doing so. > > That having been said, .freqSequences is only a ~ 6 line function, so > you should be able to grok it pretty easily ... > > HTH, > -steve > > > -- > Steve Lianoglou > Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology > | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center > | Weill Medical College of Cornell University > Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact -- Steve Lianoglou Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center | Weill Medical College of Cornell University Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact