% File src/library/methods/man/promptMethods.Rd
% Part of the R package, https://www.R-project.org
% Copyright 1995-2018 R Core Team
% Distributed under GPL 2 or later

\name{promptMethods}
\alias{promptMethods}
\title{ Generate a Shell for Documentation of Formal Methods }
\description{
  Generates a shell of documentation for the methods of a generic
  function.
}
\usage{
promptMethods(f, filename = NULL, methods)
}
\arguments{
  \item{f}{a character string naming the generic function whose methods
    are to be documented.}
  \item{filename}{usually, a connection or a character string giving the
    name of the file to which the documentation shell should be written.
    The default corresponds to the coded topic name for these methods
    (currently, \code{f} followed by \code{"-methods.Rd"}).  Can also be
    \code{FALSE} or \code{NA} (see below).}
  \item{methods}{optional \code{"\linkS4class{listOfMethods}"} object giving the methods to be
    documented.  By default, the first methods object for this generic
    is used (for example, if the current global environment has some
    methods for \code{f}, these would be documented).

    If this argument is supplied, it is likely to be
    \code{\link{findMethods}(f, where)}, with \code{where} some package
    containing methods for \code{f}.}
}
\value{
  If \code{filename} is \code{FALSE}, the text generated;
  if \code{filename} is \code{NA}, a list-style representation of the
  documentation shell.
  Otherwise, the name of the file written to is returned invisibly.
}
\details{
  If \code{filename} is \code{FALSE}, the text created is returned,
  presumably to be inserted some other documentation file, such as the
  documentation of the generic function itself (see
  \code{\link{prompt}}).

  If \code{filename} is \code{NA}, a list-style representation of the
  documentation shell is created and returned.  Writing the shell to a
  file amounts to \code{cat(unlist(x), file = filename, sep = "\\n")},
  where \code{x} is the list-style representation.

  Otherwise, the documentation shell is written to the file specified by
  \code{filename}.
}
\seealso{
  \code{\link{prompt}} and
  \code{\link{promptClass}}
}
\references{
 Chambers, John M. (2008)
 \emph{Software for Data Analysis: Programming with R}
  Springer.  (For the R version.)

 Chambers, John M. (1998)
 \emph{Programming with Data}
 Springer (For the original S4 version.)
}
\keyword{programming}
\keyword{methods}