[Rd] setClassUnion with numeric; extending class union

[John Chambers]

What warnings? Which part of the following is not what you're looking 
for? (The usual information is needed, like version of R, reproducible 
example, etc.)


 > setClassUnion("numericOrNULL", c("numeric","NULL"))
[1] "numericOrNULL"
 > setClass("foo", representation(x="numericOrNULL"))
[1] "foo"
 > ff = new("foo", x= 1:10)
 > fg = new("foo", x = NULL)
 >
 > ff
An object of class “foo”
Slot "x":
[1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

 > fg
An object of class “foo”
Slot "x":
NULL
 > fk = new("foo")
 > fk
An object of class “foo”
Slot "x":
NULL

John

Sklyar, Oleg (London) wrote:
> Dear list:
>
> I am looking for a good way to create an S4 class that would extend
> numeric, but would allow NULL instead of data as well. As far as I can
> see there is no way at the moment to do that, but please correct me if I
> am wrong. The best solution I came up with so far was the following (it
> also indicates a problem of using setClassUnion with numeric as one of
> the classes):
>
> I define a class union of numeric and NULL:
>
> Unfortunately the following works only with warnings:
> setClassUnion("numericOrNULL", c("numeric","NULL"))
>
> So I do a workaround as:
>
> setClass("aNumeric", contains="numeric")
> setClassUnion("numericOrNULL", c("aNumeric","NULL"))
>
> Then I cannot really extend the above virtual class and can only use it
> in a user-defined slot as follows:
>
> setClass("myClass", representation(data="numericOrNULL"))
> new("myClass", data=runif(20))
> new("myClass", data=NULL)
>
> and this works.
>
> Obviously it would be nicer to have something like the following:
>
> setClass("myClass", contains="numericOrNULL")
> new("myClass", runif(20)) ## .Data is not a slot of myClass
> setClass("myClass", representation("numericOrNULL"))
> new("myClass", runif(20)) ## ibid
>
> Technically I understand that the reason behind it failing to work is
> that the virtual class numericOrNULL has not got the .Data slot from
> numeric, but it would be nice to have such a functionality.
>
> Any ideas about better ways for solving such a problem than the one
> described above?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Best,
> Oleg
>
> Dr Oleg Sklyar
> Research Technologist
> AHL / Man Investments Ltd
> +44 (0)20 7144 3107
> osklyar at maninvestments.com
>
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