Hello,

'factor' returns <NA> for my S4 object when the class is given an
"as.character" method. Here is a minimal example:

> setClass("foo", contains="numeric")
> bar <- new("foo", 12)
> factor(bar)
[1] 12
Levels: 12
> setMethod("as.character", "foo", function(x) paste("x=", x@.Data))
[1] "as.character"
> as.character(bar)
[1] "x= 12"
> factor(bar)
[1] <NA>
Levels: 12

I would like to 'aggregate' by my S4 objects, but 'factor' seems to be
getting in the way. Is there an 'as.character' implementation that works
better for S4 classes? I searched help.search("factor S4 class") and
help.search("factor S4 as.character") without success.

Thank you.

Dan Murphy

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