R-alpha: Re: What are objects?

[Kurt Hornik]

>>>>> Martin Maechler writes:

> [I do think
>   this discussion belongs to  R-devel  rather than anywhere else .. MM]


>>>>> "Kurt" == Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at> writes:

>>>>> Peter Dalgaard BSA writes:

>>> Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
KH> While trying to write documentation for data.class(), I came
KH> across the following in the help for class():
KH> 
KH> An R ``object'' is a data object which has a `class' attribute.
KH> ...  LANG(is.object) returns LANG(TRUE) if its argument has a class
KH> attribute and LANG(FALSE) otherwise.
KH> 
KH> Hmm ... I thought everything was an ``object''.  What is the right
KH> way to refer to ``everything'' then?

PD> I agree, this is silly. Did we pick that one up from S, or can we
PD> fix it?

Kurt> I'd say that this is an R&R decision, but I don't think we picked
Kurt> it up from S.  In S, everything is an object.  Also, S does not
Kurt> have the R is.object() which in fact is only used once ...

PD> Obviously, it makes much more sense to let an entity with no class
PD> attribute be an object of the default class. And having to
PD> distinguish between "data objects" that are objects and those that
PD> aren't is - um - confusing.

Kurt> Right.

Kurt> What we might do is distinguish (in terminology) between objects
Kurt> and ``proper objects'' which are the ones with a class.

> or ``class objects''.
> Yes I think it's good idea to agree on terminology here.

R&R?

Kurt> As (correct me if I am wrong) eventually everything will have a
Kurt> class (as in S4) everything will eventually be a proper object,
Kurt> and data.class will be unnecessary.

> [I do correct ..]
> Hmm, I think that Ross recently said
> that  R is NOT moving into the  S4 direction (of fully OO), really,
> but rather emphasizes speed and compilation possibilities
> 	[[unfortunately, I can't find that email in my archives, now...]]

> Ross?

Yes, that would be good to know ...

Kurt> Btw, would there be any problems in attaching corresponding class
Kurt> attributes to at least

Kurt> array matrix list

Kurt> ???  (Martin, I need your strong YES PLEASE once more ...)  Would
Kurt> this break anything?  The creator functions could simply attach
Kurt> the attribs.

> I actually have only voted for 'matrix' to be class
>  (and 'Matrix' to be another class, inheriting from 'matrix' with just a
>   different method for "[").
> 'array' would be ok, too (and one could think of 'Array' with the analogous
> 			  "[.Array" method as "[.Matrix")

> I'm not so sure about the usefulness of a 'list' class.  Many objects
> are lists, internally anyway, and I want to access them as lists
> sometimes, even if they have an(other) class.

O.k., forget about list.  Let us stay with matrix and array, then.

Kurt> (Does anyone know exactly what S4 does?)
> 			    -------
> 	how do you mean this?
>          probably only John Chambers could say 'yes' to this....

What about the happy pretesters, such as Doug?

-k
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