How to search for "R" materials? [closed]

L

21

134

"The Google" is very helpful... unless your language is called "R," in which case it spits out tons of irrelevant stuff.

Anyone have any search engine tricks for "R"? There are some specialized websites, like those below, but how can you tell Google you mean "R" the language? If I'm searching for something specific, I'll use an R-specific term, like "cbind." Are there other such tricks?

Lulita answered 19/9, 2008 at 14:3 Comment(2)

How is that programming question? Need some google-fu? go to johnny.ihackstuff.com – Hoplite 19/9, 2008 at 14:6

hackr.io/tutorials/learn-r is a great place to find the best R programming tutorials submitted and voted by the programming community. – Gildus 13/12, 2016 at 11:54

B

51

http://rseek.org is a great search engine for R manuals, mailing lists, and various websites. It's a Google syndicated search app with specialized UI. I always use it.

Bently answered 22/7, 2009 at 6:58 Comment(0)

B

31

An update, several years later

All the links you need are right here:

https://stackoverflow.com/tags/r/info

This was discussed on the R-Help mailing list recently.

Some things mentioned there that haven't been covered here are:

Using the RSiteSearch function, and the package of the same name.
Using R-specific search engines. You mentioned RSeek and RSearch. You can also search the R mail archive, the help wiki, the task views, RForge, and Bioconductor among other places.

Bathometer answered 9/7, 2009 at 12:18 Comment(0)

A

22

Most of the time I find googling for R plus my searching term works fine. When it doesn't, I'll try using "R project", or adding CRAN, statistic or language to the search.

Is there a particular topic that you're having problems searching for?

Anticlockwise answered 20/9, 2008 at 23:2 Comment(0)

C

21

A new CRAN package is extremely helpful for this: check out the "sos" package.

Chisel answered 12/9, 2009 at 18:2 Comment(0)

C

16

I would just add, one great way to search for R script is to type your search term into google with "ext:r" at the end. This will return all files that have the R extension. For instance:

If you wanted some high performance computing examples, this returns Russ Lenth's "R code used in Netflix analyses" from Luke Tierney and Kate Cowles "High Performance Computing in Statistics" course.
If you wanted examples of bootstrapping, this returns many scripts, most of which look very relevant.

I usually do my basic R searches with "r-project" at the beginning, since most people who refer to R in any great detail will usually also reference the site.

Chisel answered 16/10, 2009 at 13:25 Comment(0)

N

16

Joining this discussion very late, but here is my preferred search string in Google: [R] followed by search string.

For example:

[R] lm finds several links to linear modelling in R

The reason this works is that StackOverflow uses the [r] tag, and the R mailing lists also use [R].

Namhoi answered 21/4, 2011 at 14:17 Comment(0)

D

7

CRAN is the authoritative place to look for R material.

Delwyn answered 19/9, 2008 at 14:14 Comment(0)

T

6

Search for "S-PLUS" instead. R and S-PLUS are siblings, but the latter is easier to search for.

Tabitha answered 18/10, 2008 at 19:56 Comment(1)

this wouldn't work these days - S-Plus is history now and I imagine most R users have never touched it. And most current R packages were developed without reference to it. – Hindemith 25/4, 2013 at 7:45

C

6

I typically use r-seek.org, but you can "search exactly as is" with Google by putting a + immediately before R.

By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around a single word will do the same thing.

For example: +R cbind

Cullin answered 21/4, 2011 at 15:36 Comment(1)

please note that the + no longer works (because of Google plus) but enclosing the string in quotations marks still does. – Aloisia 21/5, 2012 at 10:23

T

4

google for "r language" (with the quotes) and then your search terms.

Treachery answered 19/9, 2008 at 14:11 Comment(0)

O

4

Typing .R into Google search box instead of just R helps.

Osei answered 6/10, 2009 at 15:37 Comment(0)

V

4

Similar to @MikeKSmith's answer, type R+ into the search box

Viral answered 29/4, 2010 at 1:8 Comment(0)

P

3

To find questions/answers on Stack Overflow, I always; go to Tags, type R, find the R tag and click on it.

Jeff mentioned a better way to search for the R Tag on the podcast, but I've since deleted it. :-(

Discussion aside, Stack Overflow (or one of the sister sites) would be a great resource for R users. The very high volume R-help email list could be reduced by sending Noobies like myself to specific places here. One confounding issue is that while the questions are mostly about the R language, they are often about the proper statistical test or algorithm for the problem.

RWFarley

Perihelion answered 10/8, 2009 at 20:32 Comment(1)

To search for the "R" tag on Stackoverflow, type [R] in the search field. – Pursuant 15/2, 2010 at 14:29

E

3

You can use this site:

http://www.dangoldstein.com/search_r.html, "Search the R Statistical Language".

Has "R Multi-site search powered by Google" and "R Multi- site search powered by Rollyo".

Note that it requires JavaScript to work (can be restricted to www.dangoldstein.com and google.com if your browser setup allows it - e.g. using NoScript in Firefox).

Eaglestone answered 21/8, 2009 at 1:2 Comment(0)

B

2

GitHub's advanced search with a language constraint can be useful. Try this: language:R lubridate for example.

Brooch answered 21/6, 2012 at 22:9 Comment(0)

B

0

You could always search for "R stats", considering R is a statistical program.

Edit: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=R+stats&btnG=Google+Search

The first page shows plenty of relevant results.

Bridoon answered 19/9, 2008 at 14:5 Comment(0)

T

0

Adding "site:r-project.org" will help narrow down the results to only things on the official project web site. YMMV.

Turman answered 19/9, 2008 at 15:7 Comment(1)

May vary? Definitely varies, since there's a ton of material not on R's official site. – Selfcongratulation 19/9, 2008 at 18:4

A

0

How about "R statistical" or "R package"?

Also, restrict your search to the domain cran.r-project.org. For example, searching for how to use ifelse in R:

ifelse site:cran.r-project.org

Avogadro answered 8/7, 2009 at 13:22 Comment(0)

D

0

for your original question, i.e. how to search in google: one of my previous colleagues suggested to use keyword "r-help" instead of "r" together with your question when searching in google. It searches in the mailing list for answers. That always works for me.

Derivative answered 18/5, 2010 at 9:2 Comment(0)

E

0

When googling, "in R" works well instead of just "R".

Equitable answered 25/8, 2010 at 17:47 Comment(0)

S

0

Just type what you want to do, e.g. "R merge data frame" in google that works great! I don't read any materials, just use google as I type R code. It's just great!!!

Sangraal answered 23/7, 2011 at 9:22 Comment(0)

Recommended topics

Hot tags