Search Patterns
James Joseph Balamuta
2025-05-20
Source:vignettes/search-patterns.Rmd
search-patterns.Rmd
Introduction
When trying to solve a problem, part of the process is to research
what attempts have been made by others. The most common form of research
is to query a search portal. One downside to this
approach is that each search portal has its own set of operators or
query phrasing that will yield relevant content. As a result, those that
have domain knowledge are able to format the search query in a way that
is better. Still many queries are not constrained enough to the
programming language being used. The goal of searcher
is to
attempt to address both needs by providing a convenient pre-specified
search interface that tailors the results to R.
Usage
To begin using searcher
, first install the package from
CRAN.
# Install the searcher package if not already installed
install.packages("searcher")
Once installed, searching with searcher
is done by using
one or more of the search_*()
functions. To access these
functions, either use a namespace function call of
searcher::search_*()
or load the searcher
package and, then, call the function.
# Loads the searcher package
library("searcher")
# Searches using Google for `tips`
search_google("tips")
Search Operators
Within the searcher
package, each
search_*()
function has the parameter of
rlang = TRUE
. By default, this enforces a search that
guarantees R-specific results. If rlang = FALSE
,
then the results are generalized.
- Search Engines
- All search engines affix
"r programming"
to the end of the query to constrain the results to be R-specific. -
"r programming"
was selected because it performed best when compared to"rlang"
,"rstats"
, and"r language"
on Google Trends.
- All search engines affix
- Community Sites
-
StackOverflow:
<query> + [r]
- Twitter:
<query> + #rstats
-
Posit Community
(formerly RStudio Community):
<query>
-
Rseek:
<query>
-
StackOverflow:
- Code Repositories
-
GitHub Search:
<query> language:r type:issue
-
Bitbucket Search:
<query> lang:r
-
GitHub Search:
General Search Tips
To improve your R-related search query, it has been suggested to use:
-
"r how to do <x>"
"r how to remove legends in ggplot"
- This is a baseline search query.
-
"<package name> <problem>"
"ggplot2 fix x-axis labels."
- If the package is R-specific, it may help dropping
r
and instead focusing on the package name at the start of the query.
-
"r <package-name> <problem> <year> site:<specific-site>
"r ggplot2 center graph title 2018 site:stackoverflow.com
- By specifying the package name, a year, and target site the “freshest” solution will likely be found.
Suggestions here were pooled from discussion on rOpenSci’s slack with Steph Locke and Robert Mitchell.