[R] Summary method needed?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 2 Aug 2006, Christian Hennig wrote:

> Thank you Brian!
> 
> > > I'm updating my fpc package at the moment and will add some new functions.
> > > I learned that there should be print and summary methods for the key
> > > functions.
> >
> > for 'classes', I think.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > > But in some cases the print method will make use of more or less all the
> > > output information of the function. Is there any reason to implement a
> > > summary method in these cases?
> >
> > Would a more concise print() method be useful?  If so the existing print()
> > could become summary().
> 
> :-)
> What I initially did some years ago was to write summary methods to print out
> the required informations. Then M. Maechler told me that this is not the
> purpose of a summary method and I should write a print.summary method for
> this. Now I realise that I actually just want to print, and I don't really
> need the extra "synopsis" to be done by summary().
> 
> Now is there any recommendation on this? My intuition would be to write a
> print, but not a summary method.

That sounds fine for your purposes.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595