Formal Methods and Classes

Description

Formally defined methods and classes for R objects, plus other programming tools, as described in the references.

Details

This package provides the “S4” or “S version 4” approach to methods and classes in a functional language.

For basic use of the techniques, start with Introduction and follow the links there to the key functions for programming, notably setClass and setMethod.

Some specific topics:

Classes:

Creating one, see setClass; examining definitions, see getClassDef and classRepresentation; inheritance and coercing, see is and as

Generic functions:

Basic programming, see setGeneric; the class of objects, see genericFunction; other functions to examine or manipulate them, see GenericFunctions.

S3:

Using classes, see setOldClass; methods, see Methods_for_S3.

Reference classes:

See ReferenceClasses.

Class unions; virtual classes

See setClassUnion.

These pages will have additional links to related topics.

For a complete list of functions and classes, use library(help="methods").

Author(s)

R Core Team

Maintainer: R Core Team R-core@r-project.org

References

⁠Chambers JM (2016). Extending R, series Chapman & Hall/CRC The R Series. CRC Press. ISBN 9781498775717. (Chapters 9 and 10.)

⁠Chambers JM (2008). Software for Data Analysis: Programming with R. Springer, New York. ISBN 978-0-387-75935-7. http://statweb.stanford.edu/~jmc4/Rbook/. (Chapter 10 has some additional details.)