adding a method to the dist function

On Mon, 3 May 2004, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

On Mon, 3 May 2004, Giampiero Salvi wrote:

Hi all,
I'd like to add the Bhattacharyya method to the dist function.
What is the best way to do this? I'm using R 1.9.0 and I was looking
for the code that defines the already existing distances, but I didn't
manage. As far as I understand, dist is defined in mva that is part
of the stats package now, but where is the code?

In src/library/stats/src/distance.c

Where else did you think the C source code for the stats package would be
but src/library/stats/src?

Sorry,
I was looking in the installation directory that of course
didn't have a src dir...

You will need to add your own function, and BTW, I don't think `the
Bhattacharyya method' is appropriate for dist, as it is defined for
distributions, not data items.  It's even defined that way in your own
paper

I also had the same doubt. My intension was to interpret the data matrix
as composed by vectors of means and covariances, but I did suspect that
this would generate some confusion. Do you have any suggestions on where
this method better belongs?