[Rd] bug in help: R-devel pre 3.0

[Mark.Bravington at csiro.au]

G'day

There's a bug in R-devel help() when something is documented in multiple places. Eg

> library( gmp)
> ?apply

The browser window then contains:

Error in length(packages):"Help on topic '%s' was found in the following package:" : 
  NA/NaN argument

Also, the *next* time 'help' or '?' is called (even with eg '?glm'), the following warning message appears in the R console.

Warning message:
In ngettext(length(packages):"Help on topic '%s' was found in the following package:",  :
  NAs introduced by coercion

This is on build 61745, but has been around for a while. All good in R 2.15.2 (the browser says there's help in several places, and you get to pick). I'm using windows XP and Firefox as the browser, but the error message looks more general.

bye
Mark

Mark Bravington
CSIRO CMIS
Marine Lab
Hobart
Australia