[R] Generic Function read?

[Leonard Mada]

Dear R-Users,

I noticed that *read* is not a generic function. Although it could 
benefit from the functionality available for generic functions:

read = function(file, ...) UseMethod("read")

methods(read)
  # [1] read.csv     read.csv2    read.dcf     read.delim read.delim2  
read.DIF     read.fortran
  # [8] read.ftable  read.fwf     read.socket  read.table

The users would still need to call the full function name. But it seems 
useful to be able to find rapidly what formats can be read; including 
with other packages (e.g. for Excel, SAS, ... - although most packages 
do not adhere to the generic naming convention, but maybe they will 
change in the future).

Note:
This should be possible (even though impractical), but actually does NOT 
work:
read = function(file, ...) UseMethod("read")
file = "file.csv"
class(file) = c("csv", class(file));
read(file)

Should it not work?

Sincerely,

Leonard