The S-PLUS help documentation provides specifications of functions,
rather than a tutorial. You may find this frustrating at first,
but it comes in handy when you are unsure as to what
arguments a function needs, or how it works. For example, to see the
documentation on the absolute value function, type help(abs).
If you know what you want to do, but not what that function is called
in S-PLUS, type help.start() to open the interactive help window.
This provides an interface which allows searches for all functions relevant
to a topic.