S3 class question

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Have you defined matSummary() as a generic with UseMethod:

matSummary<-function(...)UseMethod('matSummary')

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA

"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."  - George E. P. Box
-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Joel Bremson
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2005 4:03 PM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] S3 class question

Hi,

I have a class called "spss" containing prepared info from an 
SPSS file.
...
class(ret) = "spss"
return(ret)
The function that returns this defined in a file that I source into R.

Also in that file is a function matSummary.spss.

I think I ought to be able to call 
matSummary(ret)
to run the function, but only 
matSummary.spss(ret)
will work.

What am I doing wrong here? This seems like a simple problem
yet I've been able to find nothing in the archives about this.

Joel

-- 
Joel Bremson
Graduate Student
Institute for Transportation Studies - UC Davis
http://etrans.blogspot.com

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Hi,

I have a class called "spss" containing prepared info from an SPSS file.
...
class(ret) = "spss"
return(ret)
The function that returns this defined in a file that I source into R.

Also in that file is a function matSummary.spss.

I think I ought to be able to call
matSummary(ret)
to run the function, but only
matSummary.spss(ret)
will work.

What am I doing wrong here? This seems like a simple problem
yet I've been able to find nothing in the archives about this.
Methods have to have a corresponding generic to be called like that.
Assuming your method has a single argument called ret define this:

matSummary <- function(ret) UseMethod("matSummary")

When you call matSummary the UseMethod call will forward
it to the appropriate method depending on the class of the
first argument, ret.