[R] dumpClass, hasSlot in R?

[Marc Schwartz]

On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 15:53, hadley wickham wrote:
> There are a few notes about difference between the R implementation
> and the book at http://developer.r-project.org/methodsPackage.html
> 
> I found the hardest thing to get to grips in R was method calling -
> using multiple dispatch (totally different to what I'm used to from
> Java, Python etc.).  I found this tutorial
> (http://www.gwydiondylan.org/gdref/tutorial.html, the sections on
> generic functions and multiple-dispatch) very useful.  However, it is
> for another programming language, and although the method and class
> creation process feels very similar to R, the syntax is quite
> different.  There is definitely scope for a similarly structured
> introduction to S4 classes in R.
> 
> Hadley

I have not done any S4 coding yet, but two references that may be of
interest are:

"Converting Packages to S4" 
by Doug Bates
R News Vol 3, No. 1, June 2003
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/Rnews_2003-1.pdf

and 

"S4 Classes and Methods"
by Fritz Leisch
useR! 2004 Keynote Lecture
Slides available at: 
http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/Conferences/useR-2004/Keynotes/Leisch.pdf

HTH,

Marc Schwartz