Method dispatch for function call operator?

Thank you both for very helpful answers. I have indeed missed the help pages
about "(" and now the situation is more clear.

You can use this syntax by defining a function `x<-` <- function(...) {} 
and it could be an S3 method, but it is a completely separate object from
x.  

Unfortunately, it won't work as assignment function form treats the first
argument specially. My intention was to create syntactic sugar like

x$metadata(condition) <- newvalue

instead of 

x$setMetadata(condition, value=newvalue)

I know that

metadata(x, condition) <- newvalue 

would work, but I would like to avoid that particular syntax for a number of
reasons.

Well, you can't have everything, I guess. I'll just stick to the []
operator.

Thanks again for the clarification!

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