[Rd] S4 inheritance and old class

[Julien Idé]

Hey everyone,

I would like to develop a package using S4 classes.
I have to define several S4 classes that inherits from each others as
follow:

# A <- B <- C <- D

I also would like to define .DollarNames methods for these class so, if I
have understood well, I also have to define an old class as follow:

# AOld <- A <- B <- C <- D

setOldClass(Classes = "AOld")

setClass(
  Class = "A",
  contains = "AOld",
  slots = list(A = "character")
)

.DollarNames.A <- function(x, pattern)
  grep(pattern, slotNames(x), value = TRUE)

setClass(
  Class = "B",
  contains = "A",
  slots = list(B = "character"),
  validity = function(object){
    cat("Testing an object of class '", class(object),
        "'' with valitity function of class 'B'", sep = "")
    cat("Validity test for class 'B': ", object at A, sep = "")
    return(TRUE)
  }
)

setClass(
  Class = "C",
  contains = c("B"),
  slots = list(C = "character"),
  validity = function(object){
    cat("Testing an object of class '", class(object),
        "'' with valitity function of class 'C'", sep = "")
    cat("Validity test for class 'C': ", object at A, sep = "")
    return(TRUE)
  }
)

setClass(
  Class = "D",
  contains = "C",
  slots = list(D = "character"),
  validity = function(object){
    cat("Testing an object of class '", class(object),
        "'' with valitity function of class 'D'", sep = "")
    cat("Validity test for class 'D': ", object at A, sep = "")
    return(TRUE)
  }
)

My problem is that when I try to create an object of class "D" and test its
validity

validObject(new("D"))

it seems that at some point the object is coerced to an object of class
"AOld" and tested by the validity function of class "B". What am I missing
here?

Julien

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]