CoCoA:Man
Man
search online help system
Description
The Man function is used to search the online help system for
information matching a keyword.
In the forms ?key and ??key, the key is a literal string.
This means that key should not appear enclosed in quotes.
For instance, ?gbasis is equivalent to Man("gbasis");. The command ? is case insensitive and does not notice blank space before or after key. Also, the semicolon usually required at the end of a line of CoCoA input is optional. (? was introduced in CoCoA 4.2)
The online help contains a manual and a list of commands. Each
section of the manual and each command has an associated list of
keywords. To explain how the search system works, we will use the following terminology: say the key S matches a keyword K if S is a substring of K, not counting capitalization. The key S is an exact match if it is identical to K, not counting capitalization. The command ?S searches for keywords in the online help system matching the S. If only one match occurs or an exact match occurs, the corresponding information is displayed. Otherwise, if more than one match occurs (and no exact match), matching keywords are listed. It is often advisable to make search words small at first to get as many matches as possible.
Example
?po
See:
Commands and Functions for Polynomials
DensePoly
EquiIsoDec
Evaluation of Polynomials
Factoring Polynomials
--> Output suppressed <--
?for poly
============ Commands and Functions for Polynomials =============
The following are commands and functions for polynomials:
--> Output suppressed <--
Intelligent choice of the string S can save a lot of typing. For example, there are many sections in the manual whose titles begin: Commands and Functions for; in the example above, we matched the corresponding section for polynomials by choosing the search string for poly.
The command ??S displays all keywords in the online help system that
match S (an exact match is not required, and *all* keywords are listed
even if there is an exact match).
Example
??gbasis See: GB.Start_GBasis GBasis ReducedGBasis -------------------------------
Typing ?gbasis, with a single question mark produces only the manual entry for GBasis.
The function Man is equivalent to ? except it requires an actual
string, e.g., Man("gbasis") rather than Man(gbasis).
Man with the optional second argument set to the number 0 is equivalent to ??. Since Man requires more typing than ?, there should never be a need to use it.
Note: The set of keywords associated with any section of the manual
always includes the title of the manual, so it might help to first
take a look at the table of contents, using H.Toc. (The titles of Parts, which are numbered by H.Toc do *not* appear as keywords: only titles of chapters and sections.) Similarly, the set of keywords for a command always includes the command's name. The complete list of documented commands can be printed by entering H.Commands("").
Syntax
? key ?? key where <em>key</em> is a literal string (without quotes) Man(S:STRING):NULL Man(S:STRING,N:INT):NULL where N = 0 or 1.
<type>help</type> <type>online-help</type>
