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Define return values of a function

Greg Snow 
If you want to control what gets printed in the output of your function, then you need to get into creating classes and methods.  Choose a class to return from your function, and create a print method for that class, then when you run your function the output will cause the print method to be called if you don't store the object, but the entire object will be available if stored.  E.g.:

testfunc <- function(x) {
	out <- list( a=summary(x), b=quantile(x), c=range(x) )
	class(out) <- 'myclass'
	return(out)
}

print.myclass <- function(x) {
	cat('my output:\n')
	print(x$a)
	cat('\n\n')
	cat('Q1: ',x$b[2], '\n')
	return(invisible(x))
}

testfunc(rnorm(100))
tmp <- testfunc(rnorm(100))
tmp
str(tmp)

Hope this helps,

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Soeren.Vogel at eawag.ch Define return values of a function Nov 22 Baptiste Auguie Define return values of a function Nov 22 David Winsemius Define return values of a function Nov 22 Greg Snow Define return values of a function Nov 23