[Rd] Problem with _new_ if class "lm" in object representation.

[Witold Eryk Wolski]

Hi,
The hint to use an lm0 instance in the protopy is a solution.

But I thought about a different solution to which I got used. This is to 
declare class "lm" as an S4 class by setClass("lm"). This is because I 
have to do it anyway quite frequently when using S3 classes, declared  
in contributed packages, in S4 classes.
Please consider the following code with this quite recent version 
generating a warning.
R : Copyright 2004, The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
Version 2.0.0 beta (2004-09-20), ISBN 3-900051-07-0

#I like to have an object which  contains an object of class fields:Krig.

library(fields)

setClass("Ctest"
        ,representation(
                test="character"
                ,bla="character"
                ,mod="Krig"
                )
        )

#Warning message: 
#Undefined slot classes in definition of "Ctest": mod (class " Krig ") in: .completeClassSlots(ClassDef, where) 

The overcome this warning i just modify the code adding

setClass("Krig")
setClass("Ctest"
        ,representation(
....

previous to defining class Ctest.
This is my working solution. But this one does not work with class "lm". 
Since,

 > setClass("lm")
Error in setClass("lm") : "lm" has a sealed class definition and cannot 
be redefined

I understand the errror message but I can't see the difference between 
class Krig and lm which are both S3 classes. (of course except that lm 
is in in THE stats package)
Is it intended to keep two different "models" of treating S3 classes? 
One for S3 class from the recomended, "base" packages and a different 
one for S3 classes from contributed packages? I assume not.
If, so I feel a alienated because my code so far rely on the behaviour 
which I observed for S3/contributed classes.


/E,

John Chambers wrote:

>Wolski wrote:
>  
>
>>Hi!
>>Consider this code.
>>
>>setClass("Ctest"
>>        ,representation(
>>                test="character"
>>                ,bla="character"
>>                ,mod="lm"
>>                )
>>        )
>>
>>new("Ctest",test="bla")                     #This produces an error.
>>
>>#Error in validObject(.Object) : Invalid "Ctest" object: Invalid object for slot "mod" in class "Ctest": got class "NULL", should be or extend class "lm"
>>    
>>
>
>And the error message is correct.  Since "lm" is an S3 class, there is
>no way to generate an object automatically from it.  new("lm") will also
>produce an error.
>
>If you want objects to be generated from your class with a default "lm"
>object, you have to first decide what that is.  Assuming you know, you
>need to either put that element into the protoype for the class, or have
>a method for initialize() that does something sensible, using the rest
>of the data in the object.
>
>The prototype solution could look something like:
>
>R> lm0 = lm(1~1)
>R> setClass("Ctest", representation(test = "character", 
>    bla = "character", mod = "lm"), prototype=prototype(mod = lm0))
>R> new("Ctest", test="bla")
>An object of class "Ctest"
>Slot "test":
>[1] "bla"
>
>Slot "bla":
>character(0)
>
>Slot "mod":
>
>Call:
>lm(formula = 1 ~ 1)
>
>Coefficients:
>(Intercept)  
>          1  
>
>
>There is no automatic relation between the class "lm" and the function
>lm().  The green book recommends having a generator function, but the R
>code can't assume this has been done.
>
>  
>
>>setClass("Ctest"
>>        ,representation(
>>                test="character"
>>                ,bla="character"
>>                ,mod="character"                # its the only with the class definition above.
>>        )
>>        )
>>new("Ctest",test="bla")                         #this works as I would expect.
>>
>>#An object of class "Ctest"
>>#Slot "test":
>>#[1] "bla"
>>#
>>#Slot "bla":
>>#character(0)
>>#
>>#Slot "mod":
>>#character(0)
>>
>>Thought that this is due to that the class lm has no lm(0) object. Hence i tried
>>
>>setClass("brum",representation(brum="brum"))
>>setClass("Ctest"
>>        ,representation(
>>                test="character"
>>                ,bla="character"
>>                ,mod="brum"                # its the only with the class definition above.
>>        )
>>        )
>>
>>new("Ctest",test="best")  #but this works to.
>>
>>______________________________________________
>>R-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>    
>>
>
>  
>


-- 
Dipl. bio-chem. Witold Eryk Wolski         
MPI-Moleculare Genetic
Ihnestrasse 63-73 14195 Berlin           _
tel: 0049-30-83875219                   'v'
http://www.molgen.mpg.de/~wolski       /   \
mail: witek96 at users.sourceforge.net  ---W-W----
      wolski at molgen.mpg.de