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by Paul Agapow
in programming

tagged OOP, programming, R, S3

Primitive R objects and S3

Objects are just lists and class is just an attribute.

Primordial R objects

The first thing to know is that nearly every object in R is really just a list with named elements. For example, the results returned from "summary" are returned in an object:

x <- summary(c(1:10))
x
##    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
##    1 …
by Paul Agapow
in programming

tagged OOP, programming, R

An introduction to objects in R

The various types of OOP in R, whatever that is.

Overview

Doing object-oriented programming (OOP) in R can be complicated. This is because when you look in R for the usual idioms and features of OOP:

  • some are missing
  • some are present but implemented in unusual albeit valid ways
  • some …
by Paul Agapow
in programming

tagged OOP, programming, R

Reference classes

Also sometimes wittily referred to as S5 or R5.

A more recent development in R is Reference classes. These promise, at last, fully blown objects and classes like those of C++ and Java. Naturally, this innovation comes with some downsides:

  • Reference classes are still, as yet, lightly documented
  • They use their own form of syntax and idioms
  • The C …