Dr. Robert M Flight

Something I appreciate about #RStats, is that in **many** cases, I can type a function name, without the end parentheses, and see the code for that function.

I needed a custom, slightly modified version of code from one of my own packages for an analysis, and it was easier to get the code from the #RStats console and paste it into a file and modify it.

I can't easily do that with #Python (at least in one example I just tried).

Oct 11, 2025 at 7:44pmPhanpy
Show threadmeejahOct 11, 2025

@rmflight that does sound like a great feature!

One issue in Python will be that lots of "Python code" (whether standard library or otherwise) is not written in Python (it may be C or Rust for example)

Show threadDr. Robert M FlightOct 11, 2025
@meejah that happens in R too, plenty of the built in numerical routines are C and Fortran, for those I'd still have to go to the source code itself.
Show threadZhian N. KamvarOct 11, 2025
@rmflight @meejah IIRC @coolbutuseless had something in the works that actually would do that for you.
Show threadZhian N. KamvarOct 11, 2025
@rmflight @meejah @coolbutuseless but if not, maybe this is a nerd snipe
Show threadThomas LumleyOct 11, 2025
@rmflight for ones where you can't, there's
getAnywhere()
which tracks down whatever namespace it's hiding in and drags it out.
Show threadThomas SandmannOct 11, 2025
@tslumley @rmflight That's what I am here for, #RStats nuggets that were hiding in plain sight! 😍
Show threadLuka POct 12, 2025
@rmflight I don't know your coding environment but any decent editor with an lsp can provide this functionality, for example in vscode I can jump to function definitons with alt+click, pretty seamless 😁
Show threadDr. Robert M FlightOct 13, 2025

@Lurk So I'm using Positron IDE, which is built on top of VSCodium.

alt+click will bring up functions I've defined someplace in the workspace, yes. But sometimes I want to see function code definitions for **installed** packages, or even from the base distribution.

#RStats console will give me those for a wide variety of them.

Show threadLuka POct 13, 2025
@rmflight it should work for installed packages too, I guess you need to install/enable a python language server for it too fully work.