Message-ID: <51e673cd8d2702cf963930629b2fa87d@mail.nih.gov>
Date: 2005-04-20T14:23:24Z
From: Sean Davis
Subject: Overloading methods in R
In-Reply-To: <BAY17-F138DB205C684A882E69EF3D12B0@phx.gbl>
On Apr 20, 2005, at 8:16 AM, Ali - wrote:
> (1) It seems to me that, generally, in R it is not possible to
> overload functions. Is that right?
>
> (2) Assuming that the above is true, or partially true, is there any
> extra packages to handle overloading in R?
>
> (3) Assuming (1) is TRUE and (2) is FALSE, can anyone provide some
> advice on developing some function that understand what the arguments
> are and then calls the right overloaded function?
>
> It would be something like this:
>
> overloadedFunction1 <- function(x) {};
>
> overloadedFunction2 <- function(x, y) {};
>
> theFunction <- function(...)
> {
> # How to identify ... and call the right overloaded function?
> }
>
Ali,
You are probably interested in "methods". Functions can have different
"methods" depending on what the arguments and their types are. A first
place to look is:
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#Generic-functions-
and-methods
Sean