[R] extract data from shapefiles

[Kate Zinszer]

I'm hoping that someone could guide me in how to extract data from shapefiles.  I want to extract data from a shapefile (classed as "SpatialPolygonsDataFrame") and more specifically, the data is contained within the slot called "coords" from the class "polygons" within this file and despite my best efforts (and much reading!), I'm at a lost.

Many thanks,
Kate