Rd2roxygen

The package Rd2roxygen helps R package developers who used to write R documentation in the raw LaTeX-like commands but now want to switch their documentation to roxygen2, which is a convenient tool for developers, since we can write documentation as inline comments, e.g.

## the source code of the function `parse_and_save`
ex.file = system.file('examples', 'parse_and_save.R', package = 'Rd2roxygen')
cat(readLines(ex.file), sep = '\n')

#' Parse the input Rd file and save the roxygen documentation into a file.
#'
#' @param path the path of the Rd file
#' @param file the path to save the roxygen documentation
#' @param usage logical: whether to include the usage section in the output
#' @return a character vector if \code{file} is not specified, or write the
#'   vector into a file
#' @export
#' @author Hadley Wickham; modified by Yihui Xie <\url{http://yihui.org}>
parse_and_save <- function(path, file, usage = FALSE) {
  parsed <- parse_file(path)
  output <- create_roxygen(parsed, usage = usage)
  if (missing(file)) output else
	cat(paste(output, collapse = "\n"), file = file)
}

With roxygen2 (typically using roxygenize()), we can create the real Rd file from the above source code like this:

rd.file = system.file('examples', 'parse_and_save.Rd', package = 'Rd2roxygen')
cat(readLines(rd.file), sep = '\n')

\name{parse_and_save}
\alias{parse_and_save}
\title{Parse the input Rd file and save the roxygen documentation into a file.}
\usage{parse_and_save(path, file, usage=FALSE)}
\description{Parse the input Rd file and save the roxygen documentation into a file.}
\value{a character vector if \code{file} is not specified, or write the vector
into a file}
\author{Hadley Wickham; modified by Yihui Xie <\url{http://yihui.org}>}
\arguments{\item{path}{the path of the Rd file}
\item{file}{the path to save the roxygen documentation}
\item{usage}{logical: whether to include the usage section in the output}}

The Rd2roxygen package goes exactly in the opposite way – it parses the Rd files and turns them back to roxygen comments. We can either do this job on single Rd files, or just convert the whole package. The latter might be more useful for developers who are considering the transition from Rd to roxygen.

Convert a whole package

The function Rd2roxygen::Rd2roxygen() can take a path of a source package, parse all the Rd files under the man directory, and write the roxygen comments right above the source code of the functions under the R directory. See ?Rd2roxygen for an example.

Rd2roxygen::Rd2roxygen('path/to/source/pkg')
## there must be 'man' and 'R' directories under this path

Note the path to the package should not be .. You are recommended to call this function in the directory that contains the source package.

Parse a single Rd file

We can parse a single Rd file and create the roxygen comments as well with parse_file() and create_roxygen(), e.g.

library(Rd2roxygen)
## we can specify the roxygen comments prefix (#' by default)
options(roxygen.comment = "##' ")
str(info <- parse_file(rd.file))

List of 8
 $ title  : chr "Parse the input Rd file and save the roxygen documentation into a file."
 $ usage  : chr "parse_and_save(path, file, usage=FALSE)"
 $ desc   : chr "Parse the input Rd file and save the roxygen documentation into a file."
 $ section: Named list()
 $ value  : chr "a character vector if \\code{file} is not specified, or write the vector\ninto a file"
 $ author : chr "Hadley Wickham; modified by Yihui Xie <\\url{http://yihui.org}>"
 $ name   : chr "parse_and_save"
 $ params : chr [1:3] "path the path of the Rd file" "file the path to save the roxygen documentation" "usage logical: whether to include the usage section in the output"

# parse_and_save() combines these two steps
cat(create_roxygen(info), sep = '\n')

##' Parse the input Rd file and save the roxygen documentation into a file.
##' 
##' Parse the input Rd file and save the roxygen documentation into a file.
##' 
##' 
##' @param path the path of the Rd file
##' @param file the path to save the roxygen documentation
##' @param usage logical: whether to include the usage section in the output
##' @return a character vector if \code{file} is not specified, or write the
##' vector into a file
##' @author Hadley Wickham; modified by Yihui Xie <\url{http://yihui.org}>

Roxygenize and build a package

This package also provides a tool roxygen_and_build() (or in short rab()) to help us build the package.

rab(pkg, build = TRUE, build.opts = "--no-manual",
    install = FALSE,
    install.opts = if (build) "" else "--with-keep.source",
    check = FALSE, check.opts = "--as-cran --no-manual",
    remove.check = TRUE, reformat = TRUE, before = NULL,
    ...)

The main feature of rab() is the option to “reformat” the code in the usage and example sections. If we specify reformat = TRUE in rab(), the code will be reformated like this:

## original code
rab=function(pkg,build=TRUE,install=FALSE,
check=FALSE,check.opts='',remove.check=TRUE,reformat=TRUE,...){}

## the reformatted code; note the spaces and indent
rab = function(pkg, build = TRUE, install = FALSE, check = FALSE,
    check.opts = "", remove.check = TRUE, reformat = TRUE, ...) {
}

Note this functionality depends on the package formatR, and sometimes it might not be possible to reformat the code, e.g. the \dontrun{} command in Rd can contain arbitrary texts, which means there could be illegal R expressions and formatR will be unable to format the code. In this case, the original code will not be reformatted and a message will be printed on screen.

About this vignette

This vignette was built using the vignette engine knitr::rmarkdown in the knitr package. You can find the source in the Rd2roxygen repository on Github, or

system.file('doc', 'Rd2roxygen.Rmd', package='Rd2roxygen')