class {methods} | R Documentation |
Returns the name of the object's class as a character string.
In contrast to the version of this function in the base package, this
version of class
never
returns NULL
. For objects that do not have a formal class
definition, and do not have the "class"
attribute set, the
value returned is effectively the same as data.class
.
The replacement version of the function sets the class to the value
provided. For classes that have a formal definition, directly
replacing the class this way is strongly deprecated. The expression
as(object, value)
is the way to coerce an object to a
particular class.
class(object) class(object) <- value
object |
Any R object (including basic objects for which no class is currently
defined). When assigning the class, however, it must be possible to
coerce the object to the specified class: the semantics of assigning
a class to object are equivalent to object <- as(object, value) .
|
John Chambers
The web page http://www.omegahat.org/RSMethods/index.html is the primary documentation.
The functions in this package emulate the facility for classes and methods described in Programming with Data, (John M. Chambers, Springer, 1998). See this book for further details and examples.