mapply error with Math (S4 group generic)

Wed, Feb 13, 2013 9:50 PM

Problem solved. Martin Morgan pointed out to me that the error occurs
because in the method in raster I used, to get the function name which
I need for branching, the naive approach:

funname <- as.character(sys.call(sys.parent())[[1]])

from the code of callGeneric Martin deduced that I should instead use

funname <- .Generic

That indeed made the problem go away.
Best, Robert

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Robert J. Hijmans <r.hijmans at gmail.com> wrote:

I get an error when using self-defined (not standard) functions with mapply
with S4 objects from the raster package that I develop: "Error in
as.character(sys.call(sys.parent())[[1]]) :   cannot coerce type 'closure'
to vector of type 'character'".  Does anyone understand why? The problem is
illustrated below. Thanks, Robert

# First a general example that works
setClass('Foo',representation (value = 'numeric'))
setMethod("Math", signature(x='Foo'),function(x){ x at value <-
callGeneric(x at value); x } )

[1] "Math"

f <- new('Foo')
f at value = 1
ff <- list(f,f)
e1 <- exp(f)
e2 <- mapply(exp, ff)
e3 <- mapply(function(x)exp(x), ff)


# Now for the raster package that also has the Math group generic
implemented

library(raster)

Loading required package: sp
raster 2.0-41 (21-December-2012)

r <- raster(ncol=3, nrow=3)
r[] <- 1:9
rr <- list(r,r)
g1 <- exp(r)
g2 <- mapply(exp, rr)
g3 <- mapply(function(x)exp(x), rr)

Error in as.character(sys.call(sys.parent())[[1]]) :
  cannot coerce type 'closure' to vector of type 'character'

# For this simple example we could use lapply, and that works fine:

gl <- lapply(rr, function(x)exp(x))


# but the below works fine (log is defined as a single method, overriding
its definition in the group generic)

g4 <- mapply(function(x)log(x), rr)

# or when combining with methods from group generic Arith:

g5 <- mapply(function(x)log(x*3), rr)


# Yet, I also fond problems with the Summary group generic; similar but
different error message.

m1 <- max(rr[[1]], rr[[1]])
m2 <- mapply(max, rr, rr)

Error in as.character(sys.call()[[1L]]) :
  cannot coerce type 'builtin' to vector of type 'character'

sessionInfo()

R version 2.15.2 (2012-10-26)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_United
States.1252    LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                           LC_TIME=English_United
States.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] raster_2.0-41 sp_0.9-99

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] grid_2.15.2     lattice_0.20-10 tools_2.15.2

mapply error with Math (S4 group generic)

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