[Rd] ... (dotMethods) and cbind/rbind: how to give the signature?

[Claudia Beleites]

Dear List,

I'm struggling with the signature writing cbind/rbind functions for a S4 
class.

First of all, I'm very happy that it is now possible to dispatch on ...
I follow the example for "paste" in ?dotMethods, which works as far as this:

### start example
setClass ("cbtest",
          representation = representation (data = "data.frame"),
          prototype = prototype (data = data.frame (spc = I (matrix (rnorm 
(15) , 3, 5)))
            )
 )

a <- new ("cbtest")
a

setMethod("cbind2", signature (x = "cbtest", y  = "cbtest"),
          function (x, y){
            x at data$spc <- cbind (x at data$spc, y at data$spc) 
            x
          }
          )


setMethod("cbind2", signature (x = "cbtest", y = "missing"), function (x, y) 
x)

cb.cbind <- function (..., deparse.level){
  dots <- list (...) 
  for (i in seq_along (dots)[-1])
    dots[[1]] <- cbind2 (dots[[1]], dots[[i]])

  dots[[1]]
} 


cbind2 (a, a)
cb.cbind (a, a, a)


cbind (a, a, a)
setGeneric ("cbind", signature = signature("...")) 
setMethod ("cbind", "cbtest",
           function (..., deparse.level) cb.cbind (...))
cbind (a, a, a)
cbind (a, a, a, deparse.level = 1)

### end example


However, I get the following message:
with setGeneric 

Creating a generic for "cbind" in package  ".GlobalEnv"
    (the supplied definition differs from and overrides the implicit generic in 
package "base": Signatures differ:  (...), (deparse.level))

How do I specify the correct signature? 

Furthermore: as I do not want to do anything with "deparse.level", I'd rather 
specify it as "missing" in setMethod. But again, I don't get the signature 
correct.

I tried 
setGeneric ("cbind", signature = signature (...="...", deparse.level = 
"integer"))
and 
setGeneric ("cbind", signature = signature ("...", deparse.level = "integer"))

both give: 
Fehler in makeGeneric(name, fdef, fdeflt, group = group, valueClass = 
valueClass,  : 
  Nicht-Argumente in der Signatur: integer

What is my mistake?

Thanks a lot for your help!

Claudia


> version
               _                           
platform       i486-pc-linux-gnu           
arch           i486                        
os             linux-gnu                   
system         i486, linux-gnu             
status                                     
major          2                           
minor          8.0                         
year           2008                        
month          10                          
day            20                          
svn rev        46754                       
language       R                           
version.string R version 2.8.0 (2008-10-20)


-- 
Claudia Beleites
Dipartimento dei Materiali e delle Risorse Naturali
Università degli Studi di Trieste
Via Alfonso Valerio 6/a
I-34127 Trieste

phone: +39 (0 40) 5 58-34 47
email: cbeleites at units.it