BasicClasses             package:methods             R Documentation

Classes Corresponding to Basic Data Types

Description:

     Formal classes exist corresponding to the basic R data types,
     allowing these types to be used in method signatures, as slots in
     class definitions, and to be extended by new classes.

Usage:

     ### The following are all basic vector classes.
     ### They can appear as class names in method signatures,
     ### in calls to as(), is(), and new().
     "character"
     "complex"
     "double"
     "expression"
     "integer"
     "list"
     "logical"
     "numeric"
     "single"
     "raw"

     ### the class
     "vector"
     ### is a virtual class, extended by all the above

     ### The following are additional basic classes
     "NULL"     #  NULL objects
     "function" #  function objects, including primitives
     "externalptr" # raw external pointers for use in C code

     "ANY"  # virtual classes used by the methods package itself
     "VIRTUAL"
     "missing"

Objects from the Classes:

     Objects can be created by calls of the form 'new(Class, ...)',
     where 'Class' is the quoted class name, and the remaining
     arguments if any are objects to be interpreted as vectors of this
     class.  Multiple arguments will be concatenated.

     The class '"expression"' is slightly odd, in that the ...
     arguments will _not_ be evaluated; therefore, don't enclose them
     in a call to 'quote()'.

Extends:

     Class '"vector"', directly.

Methods:

     coerce Methods are defined to coerce arbitrary objects to these
          classes, by calling the corresponding basic function, for
          example, 'as(x, "numeric")' calls 'as.numeric(x)'. 

