S4 method and S3 method with same name: potentially dangerous?
I think you have `method' confused with `generic'. predict() is an S3 generic, and you can safely allow that to be made into an S4 generic (although there will be a small performance hit). I would suggest that you add S4 methods to show() and not to print(), though.
On Thu, 3 Jul 2003, Matthias Burger wrote:
yet another question on S4 method behaviour or rather its side effects: Consider the following example (see below) where a new S4 method 'predict' is defined which by doing so makes 'predict' a S4 standardGeneric. It works and simple test examples run but I'm cautious whether this is a 'silly' thing to do. Is this a dangerous thing to do, already known to break existing code, or cause unwanted side effects on the new S4 method? Or can I savely make use of existing S3 methods with their clear and descriptive names and define new S4 methods with the same name?
Brian D. Ripley, ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595