[Bioc-devel] S4 overwrite inspector of virtual class

Hi All,

I'm currently transforming the GenVisR package into an Object Oriented
system. Currently I have a virtual class and several child-classes. I am
wondering if there is a way to tell R to use the inspector of the virtual
class only if the inspector of a child class in not defined.

For example say I had a class to store versions of a file-type and I have
a slot in the class to store the position. Between different versions of
the file-type there may be small differences (for example Chromosome may be
capitalized in version 2,3,4 but not version 1). Ideally the child classes
for 2,3,4 would be able to inherit the inspector from the virtual class to
check the chromosome name and I would define a separate inspector for
version 1 which is different.

Any thoughts? Currently both inspectors are called (virtual and the
appropriate sub-class), meaning if i added more versions in the future I
would have to re-write the virtual and child class. Whereas if I could say
ignore the virtual (i.e. default) inspector if another is defined I would
only have to write the child class inspector in the future.

Hopefully this makes sense, let me know if it doesn't or if i'm violating
a core OO principle, i'm relatively new to object oriented programming.

Thanks, Zach!