Julia function help page

Dear experienced Julia users,

Does Julia offer a help page like R?

In R, if you type ?function_name, a help page will show up with explanations of all arguments and some examples.

In Julia, however, if I type ?function_name, I can only see how to use the function. Where can I find some examples on how to use the functions.

Thanks a lot!

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This is what I see when I get help on DataFrame. See how there’s an example in the bottom? So I think it depends on the package author and whether they put examples into their docstring or not.

OK. I guess then I have to google instead since the function I am looking at doesn’t offer examples. Thanks!

Note that if you ever come across functions you think could be documented better, this is a major place where new users can significantly benefit Julia as a whole. It’s hard for people who have used Julia for years to improve the documentation since they usually aren’t looking at it very much, and the things they need to know aren’t always the things a newcomer needs help with. PRs for docs are always greatly appreciated and are usually pretty easy to get merged quickly.

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You tend to get pretty good answers here if the google doesn’t turn up anything.

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Some functions have examples; this is encouraged but not (yet) as prevalent as in the R ecosystem.

Well-documented packages have some kind of intro/tutorial section in their documentation, which is usually linked from the (Github) repository of the package.

Of course, for work in progress or less well-maintained packages even the docs may not exist. Unit tests (in the test/ directory) may be helpful in figuring out intended usage.

Most packages welcome contributions for documentation (in the form of PRs). As @Oscar_Smith suggested, newcomers to a package are usually in the best position to make these.