Is it possible to @inheritParams from a function within another package?

Question

I wrote an importer for an obscure TSV format, which I want to package and document: https://github.com/katrinleinweber/MWX-import/commits/package

The importer function passes a renamed skip_lines parameter to utils::read.table so I would like to "pass" the latter's documentation of skip into my .Rd. However, trying a few notations like @inheritParams utils::read.table skip always results in Warning: Failed to find topic […].

Whether it's actually possible to inherit a single, specific parameter from another package's function is not clear to me after reading http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/man.html and https://blog.rstudio.org/2017/02/01/roxygen2-6-0-0/.

Is it possible? If yes, thanks for any hint!

Smoker

Answer 1

If you use @inheritParams utils::read.table, then any parameters in your function which match those in utils::read.table will be inherited (provided they aren't already explicitly documented). So this would cover your use case if you used skip instead of skip_lines.

I don't think it's possible to inherit documentation for a parameter when your parameter name doesn't match though.

Chapland

Worth noting that the prefix utils:: must be specified: @inheritParams read.table will fail, even if read.table is loaded and in the NAMESPACE. – Spine