cbind is not generic as claimed, omits labels where S has them (PR#239)

[Ross Ihaka]

On Fri, Aug 06, 1999 at 12:08:05AM +0200, Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:
> Ross Ihaka <ihaka@stat.auckland.ac.nz> writes:
> 
> > I can see what the problem is - we don't have the generic dispatch
> > mechanism in place.  I will add it.
> > 
> > I think that the special casing of data frames is needed because this
> > appears to be the (undocumented) S behaviour.  A data frame anywhere in
> > the argument list causes the result to be a data frame.
> 
> I played around with this earlier today. There's nothing special about
> dataframes, S does the same with any classed object. I.e.
> 
> class(b)<-"my"
> cbind.my<-function(...)match.call()
> 
> cbind(a,b)
> 
> will dispatch cbind.my

Yetch!  What happens when there are conflicting classes I wonder.
[ Rhetorical question. ]

It sounds like this might make things easier.

	Ross
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._