Advanced R (Object-oriented programming)

exercises
advanced-r
Author

John Benninghoff

Published

August 15, 2022

Modified

November 11, 2023

Workbook for completing quizzes and exercises from the “Object-oriented programming” chapters of Advanced R, second edition, with comparisons to solutions from Advanced R Solutions.

library(sloop)
library(purrr)
library(dplyr)
library(R6)
library(methods)

# from https://github.com/hadley/adv-r/blob/master/common.R
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  comment = "#>",
  fig.align = "center"
)

knitr::knit_hooks$set(
  small_mar = function(before, options, envir) {
    if (before) {
      par(mar = c(4.1, 4.1, 0.5, 0.5))
    }
  }
)

Introduction

This workbook includes answers and solutions to the quizzes and exercises from Advanced R and Advanced R Solutions, organized by chapter. It includes excerpts from both books, copied here.

WARNING, SPOILERS! If you haven’t read Advanced R and intend to complete the quizzes and exercises, don’t read this notebook. It contains my (potentially wrong) answers to both.

12 Base types

To talk about objects and OOP in R we first need to clear up a fundamental confusion about two uses of the word “object”. So far in this book, we’ve used the word in the general sense captured by John Chambers’ pithy quote: “Everything that exists in R is an object”. However, while everything is an object, not everything is object-oriented. This confusion arises because the base objects come from S, and were developed before anyone thought that S might need an OOP system. The tools and nomenclature evolved organically over many years without a single guiding principle.

Most of the time, the distinction between objects and object-oriented objects is not important. But here we need to get into the nitty gritty details so we’ll use the terms base objects and OO objects to distinguish them.

13 S3

S3 is R’s first and simplest OO system. S3 is informal and ad hoc, but there is a certain elegance in its minimalism: you can’t take away any part of it and still have a useful OO system. For these reasons, you should use it, unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise. S3 is the only OO system used in the base and stats packages, and it’s the most commonly used system in CRAN packages.

S3 is very flexible, which means it allows you to do things that are quite ill-advised. If you’re coming from a strict environment like Java this will seem pretty frightening, but it gives R programmers a tremendous amount of freedom. It may be very difficult to prevent people from doing something you don’t want them to do, but your users will never be held back because there is something you haven’t implemented yet. Since S3 has few built-in constraints, the key to its successful use is applying the constraints yourself. This chapter will therefore teach you the conventions you should (almost) always follow.

The goal of this chapter is to show you how the S3 system works, not how to use it effectively to create new classes and generics. I’d recommend coupling the theoretical knowledge from this chapter with the practical knowledge encoded in the vctrs package.

13.2.1 Exercises

  1. Describe the difference between t.test() and t.data.frame(). When is each function called?
ftype(t.test)
#> [1] "S3"      "generic"
ftype(t.data.frame)
#> [1] "S3"     "method"
s3_dispatch(t.test(formula()))
#> => t.test.formula
#>  * t.test.default
s3_dispatch(t(data.frame()))
#> => t.data.frame
#> -> t.default

Answer: As noted by sloop::ftype() and the docs, t.test() is a S3 generic, and t.data.frame() is an S3 method for t() (transpose). t.data.frame() is called as a method when calling t(x) when x is a data.frame. t.test() calls either t.test.default or t.test.formula.

AR Solutions: Because of S3’s generic.class() naming scheme, both functions may initially look similar, while they are in fact unrelated.

  • t.test() is a generic function that performs a t-test.
  • t.data.frame() is a method that gets called by the generic t() to transpose data frame input.

Due to R’s S3 dispatch rules, t.test() would also get called when t() is applied to an object of class test


  1. Make a list of commonly used base R functions that contain . in their name but are not S3 methods.
ftype(as.character)
#> [1] "primitive" "generic"
ftype(as.data.frame)
#> [1] "S3"      "generic"
ftype(data.frame)
#> [1] "function"
ftype(eval.parent)
#> [1] "function"
ftype(file.path)
#> [1] "internal"
ftype(file.copy)
#> [1] "internal"
ftype(is.null)
#> [1] "primitive"
ftype(is.data.frame)
#> [1] "function"
ftype(Sys.localeconv)
#> [1] "internal"
ftype(Sys.time)
#> [1] "internal"

Answer:

  • All of the as. functions
  • data.frame
  • All of the file. functions
  • All of the is. functions
  • All of the Sys. functions

AR Solutions: In recent years “snake_case”-style has become increasingly common when naming functions and variables in R. But many functions in base R will continue to be “point.separated”, which is why some inconsistency in your R code most likely cannot be avoided. (install.packages(), read.csv(), list.files(), download.file(), data.frame(), as.character(), Sys.Date(), all.equal(), do.call(), on.exit())


  1. What does the as.data.frame.data.frame() method do? Why is it confusing? How could you avoid this confusion in your own code?
s3_dispatch(as.data.frame(data.frame()))
#> => as.data.frame.data.frame
#>  * as.data.frame.default

Answer: as.data.frame.data.frame() is the method used to coerce a data.frame to a data.frame. This is confusing because the class contains a period (as does the function call); avoiding periods improves readability: as_dataframe.dataframe makes the generic and method clear.

AR Solutions: The function as.data.frame.data.frame() implements the data.frame() method for the as.data.frame() generic, which coerces objects to data frames.

The name is confusing, because it does not clearly communicate the type of the function, which could be a regular function, a generic or a method. Even if we assume a method, the amount of .’s makes it difficult to separate the generic- and the class-part of the name. Is it the data.frame.data.frame() method for the as() generic? Is it the frame.data.frame() method for the as.data() generic?

We could avoid this confusion by applying a different naming convention (e.g. “snake_case”) for our class and function names.


  1. Describe the difference in behaviour in these two calls.
set.seed(1014)
some_days <- as.Date("2017-01-31") + sample(10, 5)
mean(some_days)
#> [1] "2017-02-06"
mean(unclass(some_days))
#> [1] 17203.4
s3_dispatch(mean(some_days))
#> => mean.Date
#>  * mean.default
s3_dispatch(mean(unclass(some_days)))
#>    mean.double
#>    mean.numeric
#> => mean.default

Answer: the first call calculates the mean using mean.Date(), and so returns a date. using unclass() changes the date to its underlying value (double) which calculates the mean using mean.default().

AR Solutions: mean() is a generic function, which will select the appropriate method based on the class of the input. some_days has the class Date and mean.Date(some_days) will be used to calculate the mean date of some_days.

After unclass() has removed the class attribute from some_date, the default method is chosen. mean.default(unclass(some_days)) then calculates the mean of the underlying double.


  1. What class of object does the following code return? What base type is it built on? What attributes does it use?
x <- ecdf(rpois(100, 10))
x
#> Empirical CDF 
#> Call: ecdf(rpois(100, 10))
#>  x[1:18] =      2,      3,      4,  ...,     18,     19
str(x)
#> function (v)  
#>  - attr(*, "class")= chr [1:3] "ecdf" "stepfun" "function"
#>  - attr(*, "call")= language ecdf(rpois(100, 10))

Answer: the code returns an object of class ecdf, which is build on the stepfun object, and the function base type. It additionally includes the call attribute.

AR Solutions: It returns an object of the class ecdf (empirical cumulative distribution function) with the superclasses stepfun and function. The ecdf object is built on the base type closure (a function). The expression, which was used to create it (rpois(100, 10)), is stored in the call attribute.

typeof(x)
#> [1] "closure"

  1. What class of object does the following code return? What base type is it built on? What attributes does it use?
x <- table(rpois(100, 5))
x
#> 
#>  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 
#>  7  5 18 14 15 15 14  4  5  3
str(x)
#>  'table' int [1:10(1d)] 7 5 18 14 15 15 14 4 5 3
#>  - attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 1
#>   ..$ : chr [1:10] "1" "2" "3" "4" ...
str(unclass(x))
#>  int [1:10(1d)] 7 5 18 14 15 15 14 4 5 3
#>  - attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 1
#>   ..$ : chr [1:10] "1" "2" "3" "4" ...

Answer: per the docs, the code returns an object of class table, which is built on array, which uses the dimnames attribute in combination with a vector.

AR Solutions: This code returns a table object, which is built upon the integer type. The attribute dimnames is used to name the elements of the integer vector.


13.3.4 Exercises

  1. Write a constructor for data.frame objects. What base type is a data frame built on? What attributes does it use? What are the restrictions placed on the individual elements? What about the names?
dput(data.frame())
#> structure(list(), names = character(0), row.names = integer(0), class = "data.frame")
dput(data.frame(a = 1:2, b = 3:4))
#> structure(list(a = 1:2, b = 3:4), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, 
#> -2L))
unclass(data.frame(a = 1:2, b = 3:4))
#> $a
#> [1] 1 2
#> 
#> $b
#> [1] 3 4
#> 
#> attr(,"row.names")
#> [1] 1 2

Answer: code below. The data frame is built on the list base type, and includes the names, row.names, and class attributes. This implementation requires values to be a list, names to be a character, and row.names to be an integer.

new_data.frame <- function(values = list(),
                           names = character(length(values)),
                           row.names = integer(length(values))) {
  stopifnot(
    is.list(values),
    is.character(names),
    is.integer(row.names)
  )
  structure(values, names = names, row.names = row.names, class = "data.frame")
}

new_data.frame()
#> data frame with 0 columns and 0 rows
new_data.frame(list(1:3, 4:6, 7:9))
#>        
#> 0 1 4 7
#> 0 2 5 8
#> 0 3 6 9
new_data.frame(list(1:3, 4:6, 7:9), names = c("a", "b", "c"), row.names = 1:3)
#>   a b c
#> 1 1 4 7
#> 2 2 5 8
#> 3 3 6 9

AR Solutions: Data frames are built on named lists of vectors, which all have the same length. Besides the class and the column names (names), the row.names are their only further attribute. This must be a character vector with the same length as the other vectors.

We need to provide the number of rows as an input to make it possible to create data frames with 0 columns but multiple rows.

This leads to the following constructor:

new_data.frame <- function(x, n, row.names = NULL) {
  # Check if the underlying object is a list
  stopifnot(is.list(x))

  # Check all inputs are the same length
  # (This check also allows that x has length 0)
  stopifnot(all(lengths(x) == n))

  if (is.null(row.names)) {
    # Use special row names helper from base R
    row.names <- .set_row_names(n)
  } else {
    # Otherwise check that they're a character vector with the
    # correct length
    stopifnot(is.character(row.names), length(row.names) == n)
  }

  structure(
    x,
    class = "data.frame",
    row.names = row.names
  )
}

# Test
x <- list(a = 1, b = 2)
new_data.frame(x, n = 1)
#>   a b
#> 1 1 2
new_data.frame(x, n = 1, row.names = "l1")
#>    a b
#> l1 1 2
# Create a data frame with 0 columns and 2 rows
new_data.frame(list(), n = 2)
#> data frame with 0 columns and 2 rows

Note: AR Solutions approach also validates that all inputs are same length, and supports creation of dataframes with 0 columns but multiple rows.


  1. Enhance my factor() helper to have better behaviour when one or more values is not found in levels. What does base::factor() do in this situation?
new_factor <- function(x = integer(), levels = character()) {
  stopifnot(
    is.integer(x),
    is.character(levels)
  )

  structure(
    x,
    levels = levels,
    class = "factor"
  )
}

Answer: the fix is to update validate_factor() to allow NA values, since the helper already fills in NA when values is not found in levels. This matches the behavior of base::factor().

validate_factor <- function(x) {
  values <- unclass(x)
  levels <- attr(x, "levels")

  if (!all(is.na(values) | values > 0)) {
    stop(
      "All non-missing `x` values must be greater than zero",
      call. = FALSE
    )
  }

  if (length(levels) < max(values, na.rm = TRUE)) {
    stop(
      "There must be at least as many `levels` as possible values in `x`",
      call. = FALSE
    )
  }

  x
}

my_factor <- function(x = character(), levels = unique(x)) {
  ind <- match(x, levels)
  validate_factor(new_factor(ind, levels))
}

factor(c("a", "a", "b"), levels = "a")
#> [1] a    a    <NA>
#> Levels: a
my_factor(c("a", "a", "b"), levels = "a")
#> [1] a    a    <NA>
#> Levels: a

AR Solutions: base::factor() converts these values (silently) into NAs.

The factor() helper including the constructor (new_factor()) and its validator (validate_factor()) were given in Advanced R. However, as the goal of this question is to throw an early error within the helper, we only repeat the code for the helper:

To improve the factor() helper we choose to return an informative error message instead.

factor2 <- function(x, levels = unique(x)) {
  new_levels <- match(x, levels)

  # Error if levels don't include all values
  missing <- unique(setdiff(x, levels))
  if (length(missing) > 0) {
    stop(
      "The following values do not occur in the levels of x: ",
      paste0("'", missing, "'", collapse = ", "), ".",
      call. = FALSE
    )
  }

  validate_factor(new_factor(new_levels, levels))
}

# Test
try(factor2(c("a", "b", "c"), levels = c("a", "b")))
#> Error : The following values do not occur in the levels of x: 'c'.

  1. Carefully read the source code of factor(). What does it do that my constructor does not?
factor(c("a", "a", "b", "c"), labels = c("alpha", "beta", "beta"))
#> [1] alpha alpha beta  beta 
#> Levels: alpha beta
class(factor(1:10, ordered = TRUE))
#> [1] "ordered" "factor"

Answer: the base implementation:

  • sets the value to character(0) if the value is null
  • retains value names
  • allows an upper bound on the number of levels, nmax
  • coerces the value to character
  • provides a method for excluding values from levels, exclude
  • provides labels for remapping factors
  • adds an “ordered” class if the value is ordered (ordered = TRUE)

Note: labels are an interesting and unexpected feature of factor()

factor
#> function (x = character(), levels, labels = levels, exclude = NA, 
#>     ordered = is.ordered(x), nmax = NA) 
#> {
#>     if (is.null(x)) 
#>         x <- character()
#>     nx <- names(x)
#>     if (missing(levels)) {
#>         y <- unique(x, nmax = nmax)
#>         ind <- order(y)
#>         levels <- unique(as.character(y)[ind])
#>     }
#>     force(ordered)
#>     if (!is.character(x)) 
#>         x <- as.character(x)
#>     levels <- levels[is.na(match(levels, exclude))]
#>     f <- match(x, levels)
#>     if (!is.null(nx)) 
#>         names(f) <- nx
#>     if (missing(labels)) {
#>         levels(f) <- as.character(levels)
#>     }
#>     else {
#>         nlab <- length(labels)
#>         if (nlab == length(levels)) {
#>             nlevs <- unique(xlevs <- as.character(labels))
#>             at <- attributes(f)
#>             at$levels <- nlevs
#>             f <- match(xlevs, nlevs)[f]
#>             attributes(f) <- at
#>         }
#>         else if (nlab == 1L) 
#>             levels(f) <- paste0(labels, seq_along(levels))
#>         else stop(gettextf("invalid 'labels'; length %d should be 1 or %d", 
#>             nlab, length(levels)), domain = NA)
#>     }
#>     class(f) <- c(if (ordered) "ordered", "factor")
#>     f
#> }
#> <bytecode: 0x14885f678>
#> <environment: namespace:base>

AR Solutions: The original implementation (base::factor()) allows more flexible input for x. It coerces x to character or replaces it with character(0) (in case of NULL). It also ensures that the levels are unique. This is achieved by setting them via base::levels<-, which fails when duplicate values are supplied.

Note: I missed the fact that base::levels<- fails when duplicate values are supplied.


  1. Factors have an optional “contrasts” attribute. Read the help for C(), and briefly describe the purpose of the attribute. What type should it have? Rewrite the new_factor() constructor to include this attribute.

Answer: per the “contrast {stats}” documentation, contrast matrices are used in fitting analysis of variance and regression models, so the attribute should be a matrix.

new_factor <- function(x = integer(), levels = character(), contr = matrix()) {
  stopifnot(is.integer(x), is.character(levels), is.matrix(contr))

  structure(
    x,
    levels = levels,
    class = "factor",
    contrasts = contr
  )
}

AR Solutions: When factor variables (representing nominal or ordinal information) are used in statistical models, they are typically encoded as dummy variables and by default each level is compared with the first factor level. However, many different encodings (“contrasts”) are possible, see Contrast.

Within R’s formula interface you can wrap a factor in stats::C() and specify the contrast of your choice. Alternatively, you can set the contrasts attribute of your factor variable, which accepts matrix input. (See ?contr.helmert or similar for details.)

Our updated new_factor() constructor gets a contrasts argument, which accepts a numeric matrix or NULL (default).

# Updated new_factor() constructor
new_factor <- function(x = integer(),
                       levels = character(),
                       contrasts = NULL) {
  stopifnot(is.integer(x))
  stopifnot(is.character(levels))

  if (!is.null(constrasts)) {
    stopifnot(is.matrix(contrasts) && is.numeric(contrasts)) # nolint: conjunct_test_linter.
  }

  structure(
    x,
    levels = levels,
    class = "factor",
    contrasts = contrasts
  )
}

  1. Read the documentation for utils::as.roman(). How would you write a constructor for this class? Does it need a validator? What might a helper do?
dput(as.roman(3899))
#> structure(3899L, class = "roman")
new_roman <- function(x = integer()) {
  stopifnot(is.integer(x))

  structure(
    x,
    class = "roman"
  )
}

new_roman(2022L)
#> [1] MMXXII

Answer: the structure of the class “roman” is simple, an integer with a defined class. A simple constructor would take an integer and return an object of class “roman” as above. A validator is probably not needed, but could validate that the integer is within the supported range of integers (1-3899). A helper might coerce the number to be an integer using as.integer().

AR Solutions: This function transforms numeric input into Roman numbers. It is built on the integer type, which results in the following constructor.

new_roman <- function(x = integer()) {
  stopifnot(is.integer(x))
  structure(x, class = "roman")
}

The documentation tells us, that only values between 1 and 3899 are uniquely represented, which we then include in our validation function.

validate_roman <- function(x) {
  values <- unclass(x)

  if (any(values < 1 | values > 3899)) {
    stop(
      "Roman numbers must fall between 1 and 3899.",
      call. = FALSE
    )
  }

  x
}

For convenience, we allow the user to also pass real values to a helper function.

roman <- function(x = integer()) {
  x <- as.integer(x)

  validate_roman(new_roman(x))
}

# Test
roman(c(1, 753, 2019))
#> [1] I       DCCLIII MMXIX
try(roman(0))
#> Error : Roman numbers must fall between 1 and 3899.

13.4.4 Exercises

  1. Read the source code for t() and t.test() and confirm that t.test() is an S3 generic and not an S3 method. What happens if you create an object with class test and call t() with it? Why?
x <- structure(1:10, class = "test")
t(x)
#>      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6] [,7] [,8] [,9] [,10]
#> [1,]    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10
#> attr(,"class")
#> [1] "test"

Answer: both t() and t.test() simply call UseMethod(), and are S3 generics.

t
#> function (x) 
#> UseMethod("t")
#> <bytecode: 0x11ec57740>
#> <environment: namespace:base>
t.test
#> function (x, ...) 
#> UseMethod("t.test")
#> <bytecode: 0x12832c908>
#> <environment: namespace:stats>

Creating an object with class test and calling t() uses the default method since t.test() is not a registered method for t(), as this code shows:

methods("t")
#> [1] t.data.frame  t.default     t.ts*         t.vctrs_sclr* t.vctrs_vctr*
#> see '?methods' for accessing help and source code
s3_dispatch(t(x))
#>    t.test
#> => t.default

AR Solutions: We can see that t.test() is a generic because it calls UseMethod().

# or simply call
ftype(t.test)
#> [1] "S3"      "generic"

Interestingly, R also provides helpers, which list functions that look like methods, but in fact are not:

tools::nonS3methods("stats")
#> [1] "anova.lmlist"        "expand.model.frame"  "fitted.values"      
#> [4] "influence.measures"  "lag.plot"            "t.test"             
#> [7] "plot.spec.phase"     "plot.spec.coherency"

When we create an object with class test, t() dispatches to the t.default() method. This happens, because UseMethod() simply searches for functions named paste0("generic", ".", c(class(x), "default")).

However, in older versions of R (pre R 4.0.0; when Advanced R was written) this behaviour was slightly different. Instead of dispatching to the t.default() method, the t.test() generic was erroneously treated as a method of t() which then dispatched to t.test.default() or (when defined) to t.test.test().


  1. What generics does the table class have methods for?

Answer: s3_methods_class() answers this question:

s3_methods_class("table")
#> # A tibble: 11 × 4
#>    generic       class visible source             
#>    <chr>         <chr> <lgl>   <chr>              
#>  1 [             table TRUE    base               
#>  2 aperm         table TRUE    base               
#>  3 as_tibble     table FALSE   registered S3method
#>  4 as.data.frame table TRUE    base               
#>  5 Axis          table FALSE   registered S3method
#>  6 lines         table FALSE   registered S3method
#>  7 plot          table FALSE   registered S3method
#>  8 points        table FALSE   registered S3method
#>  9 print         table TRUE    base               
#> 10 summary       table TRUE    base               
#> 11 tail          table FALSE   registered S3method

AR Solutions: This is a simple application of sloop::s3_methods_class().

Interestingly, the table class has a number of methods designed to help plotting with base graphics.

x <- rpois(100, 5)
plot(table(x))


  1. What generics does the ecdf class have methods for?

Answer:

s3_methods_class("ecdf")
#> # A tibble: 4 × 4
#>   generic  class visible source             
#>   <chr>    <chr> <lgl>   <chr>              
#> 1 plot     ecdf  TRUE    stats              
#> 2 print    ecdf  FALSE   registered S3method
#> 3 quantile ecdf  FALSE   registered S3method
#> 4 summary  ecdf  FALSE   registered S3method

AR Solutions: We use the same approach as above.

The methods are primarily designed for display (plot(), print(), summary()), but you can also extract quantiles with quantile().


  1. Which base generic has the greatest number of defined methods?

Answer: using code from 6.2.5, identify generics and count defined methods:

# from 6.2.5 exercises, this code makes a list of all functions in the base package
funs <- Filter(is.function, mget(ls("package:base", all.names = TRUE), inherits = TRUE))

get_method_count <- function(fname) {
  data.frame(
    name = fname,
    # this code should work but doesn't:
    # method_count = nrow(s3_methods_generic(fname))
    method_count = length(methods(fname))
  )
}

map_dfr(names(funs), get_method_count) |>
  arrange(desc(method_count))
#>                                    name method_count
#> 1                                 print          278
#> 2                                format          126
#> 3                                     [           49
#> 4                               summary           39
#> 5                          as.character           32
#> 6                         as.data.frame           32
#> 7                                  plot           31
#> 8                                    [[           22
#> 9                                   [<-           18
#> 10                                  $<-           18
#> 11                                    $           17
#> 12                                 file           17
#> 13                                 [[<-           15
#> 14                              as.list           15
#> 15                                    c           15
#> 16                            all.equal           12
#> 17                                xtfrm           11
#> 18                                  rep           10
#> 19                               unique           10
#> 20                           duplicated            9
#> 21                              as.Date            8
#> 22                            as.matrix            8
#> 23                           as.POSIXlt            7
#> 24                             length<-            7
#> 25                                 mean            7
#> 26                              names<-            7
#> 27                                  row            7
#> 28                        anyDuplicated            6
#> 29                           as.POSIXct            6
#> 30                                 diff            6
#> 31                               length            6
#> 32                                write            6
#> 33                                anyNA            5
#> 34                     conditionMessage            5
#> 35                                is.na            5
#> 36                              is.na<-            5
#> 37                               labels            5
#> 38                                names            5
#> 39                                    t            5
#> 40                                    -            4
#> 41                                    +            4
#> 42                            as.double            4
#> 43                            as.vector            4
#> 44                                close            4
#> 45                                  cut            4
#> 46                                 open            4
#> 47                                range            4
#> 48                                split            4
#> 49                               subset            4
#> 50                                    !            3
#> 51                                    &            3
#> 52                                    |            3
#> 53                           as.logical            3
#> 54                                cbind            3
#> 55                           dimnames<-            3
#> 56                           is.numeric            3
#> 57                                kappa            3
#> 58                               levels            3
#> 59                             levels<-            3
#> 60                                   ls            3
#> 61                                match            3
#> 62                                merge            3
#> 63                                mtfrm            3
#> 64                               pretty            3
#> 65                          row.names<-            3
#> 66                                  seq            3
#> 67                                 sort            3
#> 68                            transform            3
#> 69                                    *            2
#> 70                                    /            2
#> 71                                aperm            2
#> 72                           as.integer            2
#> 73                             as.table            2
#> 74                               body<-            2
#> 75                                   by            2
#> 76                                dim<-            2
#> 77                             dimnames            2
#> 78                                  dir            2
#> 79                                 drop            2
#> 80                           droplevels            2
#> 81             getDLLRegisteredRoutines            2
#> 82                            intersect            2
#> 83                            is.finite            2
#> 84                          is.infinite            2
#> 85                               is.nan            2
#> 86                               julian            2
#> 87                              library            2
#> 88                                 list            2
#> 89                                  max            2
#> 90                                  min            2
#> 91                               months            2
#> 92                                   qr            2
#> 93                             quarters            2
#> 94                                rbind            2
#> 95                                  rev            2
#> 96                                round            2
#> 97                            row.names            2
#> 98                               rowsum            2
#> 99                              setdiff            2
#> 100                            setequal            2
#> 101                               solve            2
#> 102                             sort_by            2
#> 103                             split<-            2
#> 104                              system            2
#> 105                               trunc            2
#> 106                               union            2
#> 107                              unlist            2
#> 108                            weekdays            2
#> 109                               which            2
#> 110                              within            2
#> 111                                  !=            1
#> 112                                 %/%            1
#> 113                                  %%            1
#> 114                                   ^            1
#> 115                                   <            1
#> 116                                  <=            1
#> 117                                  ==            1
#> 118                                   >            1
#> 119                                  >=            1
#> 120                            as.array            1
#> 121                      as.environment            1
#> 122                       as.expression            1
#> 123                         as.function            1
#> 124                             as.null            1
#> 125                           as.single            1
#> 126                                attr            1
#> 127                                chol            1
#> 128                     chooseOpsMethod            1
#> 129                       conditionCall            1
#> 130                         determinant            1
#> 131                                 dim            1
#> 132                                dump            1
#> 133                                eval            1
#> 134                              factor            1
#> 135                               flush            1
#> 136                                  gc            1
#> 137                         interaction            1
#> 138                         isSymmetric            1
#> 139                           kronecker            1
#> 140                             lengths            1
#> 141                       library.dynam            1
#> 142                         nameOfClass            1
#> 143                               order            1
#> 144                                pmax            1
#> 145                                pmin            1
#> 146                              remove            1
#> 147                              sample            1
#> 148                                save            1
#> 149                               scale            1
#> 150                                seek            1
#> 151                            sequence            1
#> 152                                sink            1
#> 153                                 sum            1
#> 154                            toString            1
#> 155                            truncate            1
#> 156                               units            1
#> 157                             units<-            1
#> 158                                 url            1
#> 159                                with            1
#> 160                              -.Date            0
#> 161                            -.POSIXt            0
#> 162                                   :            0
#> 163                                  ::            0
#> 164                                 :::            0
#> 165                           !.hexmode            0
#> 166                           !.octmode            0
#> 167                        .__H__.cbind            0
#> 168                        .__H__.rbind            0
#> 169                              ...elt            0
#> 170                           ...length            0
#> 171                            ...names            0
#> 172                      ..getNamespace            0
#> 173                      .amatch_bounds            0
#> 174                       .amatch_costs            0
#> 175                            .bincode            0
#> 176                                  .C            0
#> 177                        .cache_class            0
#> 178                               .Call            0
#> 179                      .Call.graphics            0
#> 180                       .check_tzones            0
#> 181                             .class2            0
#> 182                                .col            0
#> 183                           .colMeans            0
#> 184                            .colSums            0
#> 185                               .Date            0
#> 186             .decode_numeric_version            0
#> 187                            .Defunct            0
#> 188                        .deparseOpts            0
#> 189                         .Deprecated            0
#> 190                             .detach            0
#> 191                           .difftime            0
#> 192                         .doSortWrap            0
#> 193                            .doTrace            0
#> 194                             .doWrap            0
#> 195                            .dynLibs            0
#> 196             .encode_numeric_version            0
#> 197              .expand_R_libs_env_var            0
#> 198                           .External            0
#> 199                  .External.graphics            0
#> 200                          .External2            0
#> 201                          .First.sys            0
#> 202                       .format.zeros            0
#> 203                    .formula2varlist            0
#> 204                            .Fortran            0
#> 205                       .getNamespace            0
#> 206                   .getNamespaceInfo            0
#> 207                .getRequiredPackages            0
#> 208               .getRequiredPackages2            0
#> 209                                 .gt            0
#> 210                                .gtn            0
#> 211                  .handleSimpleError            0
#> 212                           .Internal            0
#> 213                .isMethodsDispatchOn            0
#> 214                             .isOpen            0
#> 215                          .kappa_tri            0
#> 216                          .kronecker            0
#> 217                           .libPaths            0
#> 218               .make_numeric_version            0
#> 219                        .makeMessage            0
#> 220                             .mapply            0
#> 221                          .maskedMsg            0
#> 222                 .mergeExportMethods            0
#> 223                 .mergeImportMethods            0
#> 224                  .NotYetImplemented            0
#> 225                         .NotYetUsed            0
#> 226                  .OptRequireMethods            0
#> 227                           .packages            0
#> 228              .packageStartupMessage            0
#> 229                            .POSIXct            0
#> 230                            .POSIXlt            0
#> 231                             .pretty            0
#> 232                          .Primitive            0
#> 233                          .primTrace            0
#> 234                        .primUntrace            0
#> 235                           .rangeNum            0
#> 236                              .rmpkg            0
#> 237                                .row            0
#> 238                     .row_names_info            0
#> 239                           .rowMeans            0
#> 240                       .rowNamesDF<-            0
#> 241                            .rowSums            0
#> 242                           .S3method            0
#> 243                             .Script            0
#> 244                      .set_row_names            0
#> 245                .signalSimpleWarning            0
#> 246                   .standard_regexps            0
#> 247                             .subset            0
#> 248                            .subset2            0
#> 249                      .TAOCP1997init            0
#> 250                          .traceback            0
#> 251                 .tryResumeInterrupt            0
#> 252                       .valid.factor            0
#> 253                                   (            0
#> 254                              [.AsIs            0
#> 255                        [.data.frame            0
#> 256                              [.Date            0
#> 257                          [.difftime            0
#> 258                             [.Dlist            0
#> 259                       [.DLLInfoList            0
#> 260                            [.factor            0
#> 261                           [.hexmode            0
#> 262                            [.listof            0
#> 263                           [.noquote            0
#> 264                   [.numeric_version            0
#> 265                           [.octmode            0
#> 266                           [.POSIXct            0
#> 267                           [.POSIXlt            0
#> 268                       [.simple.list            0
#> 269                             [.table            0
#> 270                          [.warnings            0
#> 271                       [[.data.frame            0
#> 272                             [[.Date            0
#> 273                           [[.factor            0
#> 274                  [[.numeric_version            0
#> 275                          [[.POSIXct            0
#> 276                          [[.POSIXlt            0
#> 277                     [[<-.data.frame            0
#> 278                         [[<-.factor            0
#> 279                [[<-.numeric_version            0
#> 280                        [[<-.POSIXlt            0
#> 281                      [<-.data.frame            0
#> 282                            [<-.Date            0
#> 283                        [<-.difftime            0
#> 284                          [<-.factor            0
#> 285                 [<-.numeric_version            0
#> 286                         [<-.POSIXct            0
#> 287                         [<-.POSIXlt            0
#> 288                                   {            0
#> 289                                   @            0
#> 290                                 @<-            0
#> 291                          *.difftime            0
#> 292                          /.difftime            0
#> 293                           &.hexmode            0
#> 294                           &.octmode            0
#> 295                                  &&            0
#> 296                                 %*%            0
#> 297                                %||%            0
#> 298                                %in%            0
#> 299                                 %o%            0
#> 300                                 %x%            0
#> 301                              +.Date            0
#> 302                            +.POSIXt            0
#> 303                                  <-            0
#> 304                                 <<-            0
#> 305                                   =            0
#> 306                           |.hexmode            0
#> 307                           |.octmode            0
#> 308                                  ||            0
#> 309                                   ~            0
#> 310                           $.DLLInfo            0
#> 311                   $.package_version            0
#> 312                      $<-.data.frame            0
#> 313                         $<-.POSIXlt            0
#> 314                          abbreviate            0
#> 315                                 abs            0
#> 316                                acos            0
#> 317                               acosh            0
#> 318               activeBindingFunction            0
#> 319                               addNA            0
#> 320                     addTaskCallback            0
#> 321                               agrep            0
#> 322                              agrepl            0
#> 323                               alist            0
#> 324                                 all            0
#> 325                 all.equal.character            0
#> 326                   all.equal.default            0
#> 327               all.equal.environment            0
#> 328               all.equal.envRefClass            0
#> 329                    all.equal.factor            0
#> 330                   all.equal.formula            0
#> 331                  all.equal.function            0
#> 332                  all.equal.language            0
#> 333                      all.equal.list            0
#> 334                   all.equal.numeric            0
#> 335                    all.equal.POSIXt            0
#> 336                       all.equal.raw            0
#> 337                           all.names            0
#> 338                            all.vars            0
#> 339                     allowInterrupts            0
#> 340                                 any            0
#> 341                 anyDuplicated.array            0
#> 342            anyDuplicated.data.frame            0
#> 343               anyDuplicated.default            0
#> 344                anyDuplicated.matrix            0
#> 345                    anyNA.data.frame            0
#> 346               anyNA.numeric_version            0
#> 347                       anyNA.POSIXlt            0
#> 348                       aperm.default            0
#> 349                         aperm.table            0
#> 350                              append            0
#> 351                               apply            0
#> 352                                 Arg            0
#> 353                                args            0
#> 354                               array            0
#> 355                            array2DF            0
#> 356                            arrayInd            0
#> 357                    as.array.default            0
#> 358                             as.call            0
#> 359              as.character.condition            0
#> 360                   as.character.Date            0
#> 361                as.character.default            0
#> 362                  as.character.error            0
#> 363                 as.character.factor            0
#> 364                as.character.hexmode            0
#> 365        as.character.numeric_version            0
#> 366                as.character.octmode            0
#> 367                 as.character.POSIXt            0
#> 368                 as.character.srcref            0
#> 369                          as.complex            0
#> 370                 as.data.frame.array            0
#> 371                  as.data.frame.AsIs            0
#> 372             as.data.frame.character            0
#> 373               as.data.frame.complex            0
#> 374            as.data.frame.data.frame            0
#> 375                  as.data.frame.Date            0
#> 376               as.data.frame.default            0
#> 377              as.data.frame.difftime            0
#> 378                as.data.frame.factor            0
#> 379               as.data.frame.integer            0
#> 380                  as.data.frame.list            0
#> 381               as.data.frame.logical            0
#> 382                as.data.frame.matrix            0
#> 383          as.data.frame.model.matrix            0
#> 384               as.data.frame.noquote            0
#> 385               as.data.frame.numeric            0
#> 386       as.data.frame.numeric_version            0
#> 387               as.data.frame.ordered            0
#> 388               as.data.frame.POSIXct            0
#> 389               as.data.frame.POSIXlt            0
#> 390                   as.data.frame.raw            0
#> 391                 as.data.frame.table            0
#> 392                    as.data.frame.ts            0
#> 393                as.data.frame.vector            0
#> 394                   as.Date.character            0
#> 395                     as.Date.default            0
#> 396                      as.Date.factor            0
#> 397                     as.Date.numeric            0
#> 398                     as.Date.POSIXct            0
#> 399                     as.Date.POSIXlt            0
#> 400                         as.difftime            0
#> 401                  as.double.difftime            0
#> 402                   as.double.POSIXlt            0
#> 403               as.expression.default            0
#> 404                           as.factor            0
#> 405                 as.function.default            0
#> 406                          as.hexmode            0
#> 407                  as.list.data.frame            0
#> 408                        as.list.Date            0
#> 409                     as.list.default            0
#> 410                    as.list.difftime            0
#> 411                 as.list.environment            0
#> 412                      as.list.factor            0
#> 413                    as.list.function            0
#> 414             as.list.numeric_version            0
#> 415                     as.list.POSIXct            0
#> 416                     as.list.POSIXlt            0
#> 417                   as.logical.factor            0
#> 418                as.matrix.data.frame            0
#> 419                   as.matrix.default            0
#> 420                   as.matrix.noquote            0
#> 421                   as.matrix.POSIXlt            0
#> 422                             as.name            0
#> 423                     as.null.default            0
#> 424                          as.numeric            0
#> 425                  as.numeric_version            0
#> 426                          as.octmode            0
#> 427                          as.ordered            0
#> 428                  as.package_version            0
#> 429                         as.pairlist            0
#> 430                     as.POSIXct.Date            0
#> 431                  as.POSIXct.default            0
#> 432                  as.POSIXct.numeric            0
#> 433                  as.POSIXct.POSIXlt            0
#> 434                as.POSIXlt.character            0
#> 435                     as.POSIXlt.Date            0
#> 436                  as.POSIXlt.default            0
#> 437                   as.POSIXlt.factor            0
#> 438                  as.POSIXlt.numeric            0
#> 439                  as.POSIXlt.POSIXct            0
#> 440                               as.qr            0
#> 441                              as.raw            0
#> 442                   as.single.default            0
#> 443                           as.symbol            0
#> 444                    as.table.default            0
#> 445                as.vector.data.frame            0
#> 446                    as.vector.factor            0
#> 447                   as.vector.POSIXlt            0
#> 448                                asin            0
#> 449                               asinh            0
#> 450                         asNamespace            0
#> 451                              asplit            0
#> 452                                asS3            0
#> 453                                asS4            0
#> 454                              assign            0
#> 455                                atan            0
#> 456                               atan2            0
#> 457                               atanh            0
#> 458                              attach            0
#> 459                     attachNamespace            0
#> 460                      attr.all.equal            0
#> 461                              attr<-            0
#> 462                          attributes            0
#> 463                        attributes<-            0
#> 464                            autoload            0
#> 465                          autoloader            0
#> 466                           backsolve            0
#> 467                      balancePOSIXlt            0
#> 468                             baseenv            0
#> 469                            basename            0
#> 470                             besselI            0
#> 471                             besselJ            0
#> 472                             besselK            0
#> 473                             besselY            0
#> 474                                beta            0
#> 475                     bindingIsActive            0
#> 476                     bindingIsLocked            0
#> 477                      bindtextdomain            0
#> 478                             bitwAnd            0
#> 479                             bitwNot            0
#> 480                              bitwOr            0
#> 481                          bitwShiftL            0
#> 482                          bitwShiftR            0
#> 483                             bitwXor            0
#> 484                                body            0
#> 485                              bquote            0
#> 486                               break            0
#> 487                             browser            0
#> 488                    browserCondition            0
#> 489                     browserSetDebug            0
#> 490                         browserText            0
#> 491                            builtins            0
#> 492                       by.data.frame            0
#> 493                          by.default            0
#> 494                              bzfile            0
#> 495                              c.Date            0
#> 496                          c.difftime            0
#> 497                            c.factor            0
#> 498                           c.noquote            0
#> 499                   c.numeric_version            0
#> 500                           c.POSIXct            0
#> 501                           c.POSIXlt            0
#> 502                          c.warnings            0
#> 503                                call            0
#> 504                              callCC            0
#> 505                        capabilities            0
#> 506                            casefold            0
#> 507                                 cat            0
#> 508                    cbind.data.frame            0
#> 509                             ceiling            0
#> 510                         char.expand            0
#> 511                           character            0
#> 512                           charmatch            0
#> 513                           charToRaw            0
#> 514                              chartr            0
#> 515                             chkDots            0
#> 516                        chol.default            0
#> 517                            chol2inv            0
#> 518                              choose            0
#> 519             chooseOpsMethod.default            0
#> 520                               class            0
#> 521                             class<-            0
#> 522                       clearPushBack            0
#> 523                    close.connection            0
#> 524                       close.srcfile            0
#> 525                  close.srcfilealias            0
#> 526                 closeAllConnections            0
#> 527                                 col            0
#> 528                            colMeans            0
#> 529                            colnames            0
#> 530                          colnames<-            0
#> 531                             colSums            0
#> 532                         commandArgs            0
#> 533                             comment            0
#> 534                           comment<-            0
#> 535                             complex            0
#> 536                     computeRestarts            0
#> 537             conditionCall.condition            0
#> 538          conditionMessage.condition            0
#> 539                       conflictRules            0
#> 540                           conflicts            0
#> 541                                Conj            0
#> 542                        contributors            0
#> 543                                 cos            0
#> 544                                cosh            0
#> 545                               cospi            0
#> 546                           crossprod            0
#> 547                         Cstack_info            0
#> 548                              cummax            0
#> 549                              cummin            0
#> 550                             cumprod            0
#> 551                              cumsum            0
#> 552                      curlGetHeaders            0
#> 553                            cut.Date            0
#> 554                         cut.default            0
#> 555                          cut.POSIXt            0
#> 556                          data.class            0
#> 557                          data.frame            0
#> 558                         data.matrix            0
#> 559                                date            0
#> 560                               debug            0
#> 561                      debuggingState            0
#> 562                           debugonce            0
#> 563                             declare            0
#> 564            default.stringsAsFactors            0
#> 565                       delayedAssign            0
#> 566                             deparse            0
#> 567                            deparse1            0
#> 568                                 det            0
#> 569                              detach            0
#> 570                  determinant.matrix            0
#> 571                                dget            0
#> 572                                diag            0
#> 573                              diag<-            0
#> 574                           diff.Date            0
#> 575                        diff.default            0
#> 576                       diff.difftime            0
#> 577                         diff.POSIXt            0
#> 578                            difftime            0
#> 579                             digamma            0
#> 580                      dim.data.frame            0
#> 581                 dimnames.data.frame            0
#> 582               dimnames<-.data.frame            0
#> 583                          dir.create            0
#> 584                          dir.exists            0
#> 585                             dirname            0
#> 586                             do.call            0
#> 587                           dontCheck            0
#> 588                              double            0
#> 589                                dput            0
#> 590                              dQuote            0
#> 591               droplevels.data.frame            0
#> 592                   droplevels.factor            0
#> 593                    duplicated.array            0
#> 594               duplicated.data.frame            0
#> 595                  duplicated.default            0
#> 596                   duplicated.matrix            0
#> 597          duplicated.numeric_version            0
#> 598                  duplicated.POSIXlt            0
#> 599                 duplicated.warnings            0
#> 600                            dyn.load            0
#> 601                          dyn.unload            0
#> 602                              dynGet            0
#> 603                              eapply            0
#> 604                               eigen            0
#> 605                            emptyenv            0
#> 606                          enc2native            0
#> 607                            enc2utf8            0
#> 608                        encodeString            0
#> 609                            Encoding            0
#> 610                          Encoding<-            0
#> 611                            endsWith            0
#> 612                             enquote            0
#> 613                         env.profile            0
#> 614                         environment            0
#> 615                       environment<-            0
#> 616                 environmentIsLocked            0
#> 617                     environmentName            0
#> 618                      errorCondition            0
#> 619                         eval.parent            0
#> 620                               evalq            0
#> 621                                Exec            0
#> 622                              exists            0
#> 623                                 exp            0
#> 624                         expand.grid            0
#> 625                               expm1            0
#> 626                          expression            0
#> 627                      extSoftVersion            0
#> 628                           factorial            0
#> 629                                fifo            0
#> 630                         file.access            0
#> 631                         file.append            0
#> 632                         file.choose            0
#> 633                           file.copy            0
#> 634                         file.create            0
#> 635                         file.exists            0
#> 636                           file.info            0
#> 637                           file.link            0
#> 638                           file.mode            0
#> 639                          file.mtime            0
#> 640                           file.path            0
#> 641                         file.remove            0
#> 642                         file.rename            0
#> 643                           file.show            0
#> 644                           file.size            0
#> 645                        file.symlink            0
#> 646                              Filter            0
#> 647                                Find            0
#> 648                        find.package            0
#> 649                        findInterval            0
#> 650                      findPackageEnv            0
#> 651                         findRestart            0
#> 652                               floor            0
#> 653                    flush.connection            0
#> 654                                 for            0
#> 655                               force            0
#> 656                        forceAndCall            0
#> 657                             formals            0
#> 658                           formals<-            0
#> 659                         format.AsIs            0
#> 660                   format.data.frame            0
#> 661                         format.Date            0
#> 662                      format.default            0
#> 663                     format.difftime            0
#> 664                       format.factor            0
#> 665                      format.hexmode            0
#> 666                         format.info            0
#> 667                   format.libraryIQR            0
#> 668              format.numeric_version            0
#> 669                      format.octmode            0
#> 670                  format.packageInfo            0
#> 671                      format.POSIXct            0
#> 672                      format.POSIXlt            0
#> 673                         format.pval            0
#> 674               format.summaryDefault            0
#> 675                             formatC            0
#> 676                            formatDL            0
#> 677                        forwardsolve            0
#> 678                            function            0
#> 679                               gamma            0
#> 680                             gc.time            0
#> 681                              gcinfo            0
#> 682                           gctorture            0
#> 683                          gctorture2            0
#> 684                                 get            0
#> 685                                get0            0
#> 686                   getAllConnections            0
#> 687                       getCallingDLL            0
#> 688                      getCallingDLLe            0
#> 689                       getConnection            0
#> 690  getDLLRegisteredRoutines.character            0
#> 691    getDLLRegisteredRoutines.DLLInfo            0
#> 692                          getElement            0
#> 693                       geterrmessage            0
#> 694                    getExportedValue            0
#> 695                             getHook            0
#> 696                       getLoadedDLLs            0
#> 697                        getNamespace            0
#> 698                 getNamespaceExports            0
#> 699                 getNamespaceImports            0
#> 700                    getNamespaceInfo            0
#> 701                    getNamespaceName            0
#> 702                   getNamespaceUsers            0
#> 703                 getNamespaceVersion            0
#> 704                 getNativeSymbolInfo            0
#> 705                           getOption            0
#> 706                         getRversion            0
#> 707                         getSrcLines            0
#> 708                getTaskCallbackNames            0
#> 709                             gettext            0
#> 710                            gettextf            0
#> 711                               getwd            0
#> 712                                  gl            0
#> 713               globalCallingHandlers            0
#> 714                           globalenv            0
#> 715                            gregexec            0
#> 716                            gregexpr            0
#> 717                                grep            0
#> 718                               grepl            0
#> 719                             grepRaw            0
#> 720                            grouping            0
#> 721                                gsub            0
#> 722                               gzcon            0
#> 723                              gzfile            0
#> 724                                   I            0
#> 725                               iconv            0
#> 726                           iconvlist            0
#> 727                       icuGetCollate            0
#> 728                       icuSetCollate            0
#> 729                           identical            0
#> 730                            identity            0
#> 731                                  if            0
#> 732                              ifelse            0
#> 733                                  Im            0
#> 734                       importIntoEnv            0
#> 735                             infoRDS            0
#> 736                            inherits            0
#> 737                             integer            0
#> 738                         interactive            0
#> 739                           intToBits            0
#> 740                           intToUtf8            0
#> 741                         inverse.rle            0
#> 742                           invisible            0
#> 743                       invokeRestart            0
#> 744          invokeRestartInteractively            0
#> 745                            is.array            0
#> 746                           is.atomic            0
#> 747                             is.call            0
#> 748                        is.character            0
#> 749                          is.complex            0
#> 750                       is.data.frame            0
#> 751                           is.double            0
#> 752                          is.element            0
#> 753                      is.environment            0
#> 754                       is.expression            0
#> 755                           is.factor            0
#> 756                   is.finite.POSIXlt            0
#> 757                         is.function            0
#> 758                 is.infinite.POSIXlt            0
#> 759                          is.integer            0
#> 760                         is.language            0
#> 761                             is.list            0
#> 762                           is.loaded            0
#> 763                          is.logical            0
#> 764                           is.matrix            0
#> 765                    is.na.data.frame            0
#> 766               is.na.numeric_version            0
#> 767                       is.na.POSIXlt            0
#> 768                     is.na<-.default            0
#> 769                      is.na<-.factor            0
#> 770             is.na<-.numeric_version            0
#> 771                             is.name            0
#> 772                      is.nan.POSIXlt            0
#> 773                             is.null            0
#> 774                  is.numeric_version            0
#> 775                     is.numeric.Date            0
#> 776                 is.numeric.difftime            0
#> 777                   is.numeric.POSIXt            0
#> 778                           is.object            0
#> 779                          is.ordered            0
#> 780                  is.package_version            0
#> 781                         is.pairlist            0
#> 782                        is.primitive            0
#> 783                               is.qr            0
#> 784                                is.R            0
#> 785                              is.raw            0
#> 786                        is.recursive            0
#> 787                           is.single            0
#> 788                           is.symbol            0
#> 789                            is.table            0
#> 790                         is.unsorted            0
#> 791                           is.vector            0
#> 792                                 isa            0
#> 793                              isatty            0
#> 794                     isBaseNamespace            0
#> 795                          isdebugged            0
#> 796                             isFALSE            0
#> 797                        isIncomplete            0
#> 798                         isNamespace            0
#> 799                   isNamespaceLoaded            0
#> 800                             ISOdate            0
#> 801                         ISOdatetime            0
#> 802                              isOpen            0
#> 803                           isRestart            0
#> 804                                isS4            0
#> 805                          isSeekable            0
#> 806                  isSymmetric.matrix            0
#> 807                              isTRUE            0
#> 808                              jitter            0
#> 809                         julian.Date            0
#> 810                       julian.POSIXt            0
#> 811                       kappa.default            0
#> 812                            kappa.lm            0
#> 813                            kappa.qr            0
#> 814                           l10n_info            0
#> 815                          La_library            0
#> 816                          La_version            0
#> 817                              La.svd            0
#> 818                      labels.default            0
#> 819                              lapply            0
#> 820                            lazyLoad            0
#> 821                      lazyLoadDBexec            0
#> 822                     lazyLoadDBfetch            0
#> 823                               lbeta            0
#> 824                             lchoose            0
#> 825                      length.POSIXlt            0
#> 826                       length<-.Date            0
#> 827                   length<-.difftime            0
#> 828                     length<-.factor            0
#> 829                    length<-.POSIXct            0
#> 830                    length<-.POSIXlt            0
#> 831                      levels.default            0
#> 832                     levels<-.factor            0
#> 833                          lfactorial            0
#> 834                              lgamma            0
#> 835                      libcurlVersion            0
#> 836                library.dynam.unload            0
#> 837                             licence            0
#> 838                             license            0
#> 839                           list.dirs            0
#> 840                          list.files            0
#> 841                             list2DF            0
#> 842                            list2env            0
#> 843                                load            0
#> 844                    loadedNamespaces            0
#> 845                loadingNamespaceInfo            0
#> 846                       loadNamespace            0
#> 847                               local            0
#> 848                         lockBinding            0
#> 849                     lockEnvironment            0
#> 850                                 log            0
#> 851                               log10            0
#> 852                               log1p            0
#> 853                                log2            0
#> 854                                logb            0
#> 855                             logical            0
#> 856                           lower.tri            0
#> 857                          make.names            0
#> 858                         make.unique            0
#> 859                   makeActiveBinding            0
#> 860                                 Map            0
#> 861                              mapply            0
#> 862                        margin.table            0
#> 863                          marginSums            0
#> 864                          mat.or.vec            0
#> 865                           match.arg            0
#> 866                          match.call            0
#> 867                           match.fun            0
#> 868                     Math.data.frame            0
#> 869                           Math.Date            0
#> 870                       Math.difftime            0
#> 871                         Math.factor            0
#> 872                         Math.POSIXt            0
#> 873                              matrix            0
#> 874                             max.col            0
#> 875                           mean.Date            0
#> 876                        mean.default            0
#> 877                       mean.difftime            0
#> 878                        mean.POSIXct            0
#> 879                        mean.POSIXlt            0
#> 880                        mem.maxNSize            0
#> 881                        mem.maxVSize            0
#> 882                         memCompress            0
#> 883                       memDecompress            0
#> 884                      memory.profile            0
#> 885                    merge.data.frame            0
#> 886                       merge.default            0
#> 887                             message            0
#> 888                                mget            0
#> 889                             missing            0
#> 890                                 Mod            0
#> 891                                mode            0
#> 892                              mode<-            0
#> 893                         months.Date            0
#> 894                       months.POSIXt            0
#> 895                    mostattributes<-            0
#> 896                       mtfrm.default            0
#> 897                       mtfrm.POSIXct            0
#> 898                       mtfrm.POSIXlt            0
#> 899                 nameOfClass.default            0
#> 900                       names.POSIXlt            0
#> 901                     names<-.POSIXlt            0
#> 902                     namespaceExport            0
#> 903                     namespaceImport            0
#> 904              namespaceImportClasses            0
#> 905                 namespaceImportFrom            0
#> 906              namespaceImportMethods            0
#> 907                               nargs            0
#> 908                               nchar            0
#> 909                                ncol            0
#> 910                                NCOL            0
#> 911                              Negate            0
#> 912                             new.env            0
#> 913                                next            0
#> 914                          NextMethod            0
#> 915                            ngettext            0
#> 916                             nlevels            0
#> 917                             noquote            0
#> 918                                norm            0
#> 919                       normalizePath            0
#> 920                                nrow            0
#> 921                                NROW            0
#> 922                            nullfile            0
#> 923                             numeric            0
#> 924                     numeric_version            0
#> 925                           numToBits            0
#> 926                           numToInts            0
#> 927                              nzchar            0
#> 928                             objects            0
#> 929                            oldClass            0
#> 930                          oldClass<-            0
#> 931                          OlsonNames            0
#> 932                             on.exit            0
#> 933                     open.connection            0
#> 934                        open.srcfile            0
#> 935                   open.srcfilealias            0
#> 936                    open.srcfilecopy            0
#> 937                      Ops.data.frame            0
#> 938                            Ops.Date            0
#> 939                        Ops.difftime            0
#> 940                          Ops.factor            0
#> 941                 Ops.numeric_version            0
#> 942                         Ops.ordered            0
#> 943                          Ops.POSIXt            0
#> 944                             options            0
#> 945                             ordered            0
#> 946                               outer            0
#> 947                     package_version            0
#> 948                        packageEvent            0
#> 949                 packageHasNamespace            0
#> 950                packageNotFoundError            0
#> 951               packageStartupMessage            0
#> 952                            packBits            0
#> 953                            pairlist            0
#> 954                          parent.env            0
#> 955                        parent.env<-            0
#> 956                        parent.frame            0
#> 957                               parse            0
#> 958                  parseNamespaceFile            0
#> 959                               paste            0
#> 960                              paste0            0
#> 961                         path.expand            0
#> 962                        path.package            0
#> 963                         pcre_config            0
#> 964                                pipe            0
#> 965                              pmatch            0
#> 966                            pmax.int            0
#> 967                            pmin.int            0
#> 968                            polyroot            0
#> 969                          pos.to.env            0
#> 970                            Position            0
#> 971                      pretty.default            0
#> 972                           prettyNum            0
#> 973                          print.AsIs            0
#> 974                            print.by            0
#> 975                     print.condition            0
#> 976                    print.connection            0
#> 977                    print.data.frame            0
#> 978                          print.Date            0
#> 979                       print.default            0
#> 980                      print.difftime            0
#> 981                         print.Dlist            0
#> 982                       print.DLLInfo            0
#> 983                   print.DLLInfoList            0
#> 984         print.DLLRegisteredRoutines            0
#> 985                         print.eigen            0
#> 986                        print.factor            0
#> 987                      print.function            0
#> 988                       print.hexmode            0
#> 989                    print.libraryIQR            0
#> 990                        print.listof            0
#> 991             print.NativeRoutineList            0
#> 992                       print.noquote            0
#> 993               print.numeric_version            0
#> 994                       print.octmode            0
#> 995                   print.packageInfo            0
#> 996                       print.POSIXct            0
#> 997                       print.POSIXlt            0
#> 998                     print.proc_time            0
#> 999                       print.restart            0
#> 1000                          print.rle            0
#> 1001                  print.simple.list            0
#> 1002                      print.srcfile            0
#> 1003                       print.srcref            0
#> 1004                print.summary.table            0
#> 1005             print.summary.warnings            0
#> 1006               print.summaryDefault            0
#> 1007                        print.table            0
#> 1008                     print.warnings            0
#> 1009                           prmatrix            0
#> 1010                          proc.time            0
#> 1011                               prod            0
#> 1012                         prop.table            0
#> 1013                        proportions            0
#> 1014                    provideDimnames            0
#> 1015                           psigamma            0
#> 1016                           pushBack            0
#> 1017                     pushBackLength            0
#> 1018                                  q            0
#> 1019                            qr.coef            0
#> 1020                         qr.default            0
#> 1021                          qr.fitted            0
#> 1022                               qr.Q            0
#> 1023                             qr.qty            0
#> 1024                              qr.qy            0
#> 1025                               qr.R            0
#> 1026                           qr.resid            0
#> 1027                           qr.solve            0
#> 1028                               qr.X            0
#> 1029                      quarters.Date            0
#> 1030                    quarters.POSIXt            0
#> 1031                               quit            0
#> 1032                              quote            0
#> 1033                      R_compiled_by            0
#> 1034                   R_system_version            0
#> 1035                             R.home            0
#> 1036                          R.Version            0
#> 1037                         range.Date            0
#> 1038                      range.default            0
#> 1039                      range.POSIXct            0
#> 1040                               rank            0
#> 1041                             rapply            0
#> 1042                                raw            0
#> 1043                      rawConnection            0
#> 1044                 rawConnectionValue            0
#> 1045                           rawShift            0
#> 1046                          rawToBits            0
#> 1047                          rawToChar            0
#> 1048                   rbind.data.frame            0
#> 1049                              rcond            0
#> 1050                                 Re            0
#> 1051                           read.dcf            0
#> 1052                            readBin            0
#> 1053                           readChar            0
#> 1054                           readline            0
#> 1055                          readLines            0
#> 1056                            readRDS            0
#> 1057                       readRenviron            0
#> 1058                             Recall            0
#> 1059                             Reduce            0
#> 1060                      reg.finalizer            0
#> 1061                            regexec            0
#> 1062                            regexpr            0
#> 1063                   registerS3method            0
#> 1064                  registerS3methods            0
#> 1065                         regmatches            0
#> 1066                       regmatches<-            0
#> 1067                 removeTaskCallback            0
#> 1068                            rep_len            0
#> 1069                           rep.Date            0
#> 1070                       rep.difftime            0
#> 1071                         rep.factor            0
#> 1072                            rep.int            0
#> 1073                rep.numeric_version            0
#> 1074                        rep.POSIXct            0
#> 1075                        rep.POSIXlt            0
#> 1076                             repeat            0
#> 1077                            replace            0
#> 1078                          replicate            0
#> 1079                            require            0
#> 1080                   requireNamespace            0
#> 1081                 restartDescription            0
#> 1082                     restartFormals            0
#> 1083                         retracemem            0
#> 1084                             return            0
#> 1085                        returnValue            0
#> 1086                        rev.default            0
#> 1087                                rle            0
#> 1088                                 rm            0
#> 1089                            RNGkind            0
#> 1090                         RNGversion            0
#> 1091                         round.Date            0
#> 1092                       round.POSIXt            0
#> 1093               row.names.data.frame            0
#> 1094                  row.names.default            0
#> 1095             row.names<-.data.frame            0
#> 1096                row.names<-.default            0
#> 1097                           rowMeans            0
#> 1098                           rownames            0
#> 1099                         rownames<-            0
#> 1100                  rowsum.data.frame            0
#> 1101                     rowsum.default            0
#> 1102                            rowSums            0
#> 1103                         sample.int            0
#> 1104                             sapply            0
#> 1105                         save.image            0
#> 1106                            saveRDS            0
#> 1107                      scale.default            0
#> 1108                               scan            0
#> 1109                             search            0
#> 1110                        searchpaths            0
#> 1111                    seek.connection            0
#> 1112                          seq_along            0
#> 1113                            seq_len            0
#> 1114                           seq.Date            0
#> 1115                        seq.default            0
#> 1116                            seq.int            0
#> 1117                         seq.POSIXt            0
#> 1118                   sequence.default            0
#> 1119                          serialize            0
#> 1120                       serverSocket            0
#> 1121                           set.seed            0
#> 1122                            setHook            0
#> 1123                   setNamespaceInfo            0
#> 1124                setSessionTimeLimit            0
#> 1125                       setTimeLimit            0
#> 1126                              setwd            0
#> 1127                    showConnections            0
#> 1128                            shQuote            0
#> 1129                               sign            0
#> 1130                    signalCondition            0
#> 1131                             signif            0
#> 1132                    simpleCondition            0
#> 1133                        simpleError            0
#> 1134                      simpleMessage            0
#> 1135                      simpleWarning            0
#> 1136                     simplify2array            0
#> 1137                                sin            0
#> 1138                             single            0
#> 1139                               sinh            0
#> 1140                        sink.number            0
#> 1141                              sinpi            0
#> 1142                        slice.index            0
#> 1143                       socketAccept            0
#> 1144                   socketConnection            0
#> 1145                       socketSelect            0
#> 1146                      socketTimeout            0
#> 1147                      solve.default            0
#> 1148                           solve.qr            0
#> 1149                 sort_by.data.frame            0
#> 1150                    sort_by.default            0
#> 1151                       sort.default            0
#> 1152                           sort.int            0
#> 1153                          sort.list            0
#> 1154                       sort.POSIXlt            0
#> 1155                             source            0
#> 1156                   split.data.frame            0
#> 1157                         split.Date            0
#> 1158                      split.default            0
#> 1159                      split.POSIXct            0
#> 1160                 split<-.data.frame            0
#> 1161                    split<-.default            0
#> 1162                            sprintf            0
#> 1163                               sqrt            0
#> 1164                             sQuote            0
#> 1165                            srcfile            0
#> 1166                       srcfilealias            0
#> 1167                        srcfilecopy            0
#> 1168                             srcref            0
#> 1169                    standardGeneric            0
#> 1170                         startsWith            0
#> 1171                             stderr            0
#> 1172                              stdin            0
#> 1173                             stdout            0
#> 1174                               stop            0
#> 1175                          stopifnot            0
#> 1176                       storage.mode            0
#> 1177                     storage.mode<-            0
#> 1178                     str2expression            0
#> 1179                           str2lang            0
#> 1180                           strftime            0
#> 1181                           strptime            0
#> 1182                             strrep            0
#> 1183                           strsplit            0
#> 1184                             strtoi            0
#> 1185                            strtrim            0
#> 1186                          structure            0
#> 1187                            strwrap            0
#> 1188                                sub            0
#> 1189                  subset.data.frame            0
#> 1190                     subset.default            0
#> 1191                      subset.matrix            0
#> 1192                         substitute            0
#> 1193                             substr            0
#> 1194                           substr<-            0
#> 1195                          substring            0
#> 1196                        substring<-            0
#> 1197                 summary.connection            0
#> 1198                 summary.data.frame            0
#> 1199                 Summary.data.frame            0
#> 1200                       summary.Date            0
#> 1201                       Summary.Date            0
#> 1202                    summary.default            0
#> 1203                   Summary.difftime            0
#> 1204                     summary.factor            0
#> 1205                     Summary.factor            0
#> 1206                     summary.matrix            0
#> 1207            Summary.numeric_version            0
#> 1208                    Summary.ordered            0
#> 1209                    summary.POSIXct            0
#> 1210                    Summary.POSIXct            0
#> 1211                    summary.POSIXlt            0
#> 1212                    Summary.POSIXlt            0
#> 1213                  summary.proc_time            0
#> 1214                    summary.srcfile            0
#> 1215                     summary.srcref            0
#> 1216                      summary.table            0
#> 1217                   summary.warnings            0
#> 1218                   suppressMessages            0
#> 1219     suppressPackageStartupMessages            0
#> 1220                   suppressWarnings            0
#> 1221                  suspendInterrupts            0
#> 1222                                svd            0
#> 1223                              sweep            0
#> 1224                             switch            0
#> 1225                           sys.call            0
#> 1226                          sys.calls            0
#> 1227                          Sys.chmod            0
#> 1228                           Sys.Date            0
#> 1229                          sys.frame            0
#> 1230                         sys.frames            0
#> 1231                       sys.function            0
#> 1232                         Sys.getenv            0
#> 1233                      Sys.getlocale            0
#> 1234                         Sys.getpid            0
#> 1235                           Sys.glob            0
#> 1236                           Sys.info            0
#> 1237                     sys.load.image            0
#> 1238                     Sys.localeconv            0
#> 1239                         sys.nframe            0
#> 1240                        sys.on.exit            0
#> 1241                         sys.parent            0
#> 1242                        sys.parents            0
#> 1243                       Sys.readlink            0
#> 1244                     sys.save.image            0
#> 1245                         Sys.setenv            0
#> 1246                    Sys.setFileTime            0
#> 1247                    Sys.setLanguage            0
#> 1248                      Sys.setlocale            0
#> 1249                          Sys.sleep            0
#> 1250                         sys.source            0
#> 1251                         sys.status            0
#> 1252                           Sys.time            0
#> 1253                       Sys.timezone            0
#> 1254                          Sys.umask            0
#> 1255                       Sys.unsetenv            0
#> 1256                          Sys.which            0
#> 1257                        system.file            0
#> 1258                        system.time            0
#> 1259                            system2            0
#> 1260                       t.data.frame            0
#> 1261                          t.default            0
#> 1262                              table            0
#> 1263                           tabulate            0
#> 1264                           Tailcall            0
#> 1265                                tan            0
#> 1266                               tanh            0
#> 1267                              tanpi            0
#> 1268                             tapply            0
#> 1269                taskCallbackManager            0
#> 1270                         tcrossprod            0
#> 1271                            tempdir            0
#> 1272                           tempfile            0
#> 1273                     textConnection            0
#> 1274                textConnectionValue            0
#> 1275                            tolower            0
#> 1276                             topenv            0
#> 1277                   toString.default            0
#> 1278                            toupper            0
#> 1279                              trace            0
#> 1280                          traceback            0
#> 1281                           tracemem            0
#> 1282                       tracingState            0
#> 1283               transform.data.frame            0
#> 1284                  transform.default            0
#> 1285                           trigamma            0
#> 1286                             trimws            0
#> 1287                         trunc.Date            0
#> 1288                       trunc.POSIXt            0
#> 1289                truncate.connection            0
#> 1290                                try            0
#> 1291                           tryCatch            0
#> 1292                   tryInvokeRestart            0
#> 1293                             typeof            0
#> 1294                     unCfillPOSIXlt            0
#> 1295                            unclass            0
#> 1296                            undebug            0
#> 1297                       unique.array            0
#> 1298                  unique.data.frame            0
#> 1299                     unique.default            0
#> 1300                      unique.matrix            0
#> 1301             unique.numeric_version            0
#> 1302                     unique.POSIXlt            0
#> 1303                    unique.warnings            0
#> 1304                     units.difftime            0
#> 1305                   units<-.difftime            0
#> 1306                          unix.time            0
#> 1307                             unlink            0
#> 1308                    unloadNamespace            0
#> 1309                      unlockBinding            0
#> 1310                             unname            0
#> 1311                        unserialize            0
#> 1312                            unsplit            0
#> 1313                            untrace            0
#> 1314                         untracemem            0
#> 1315                                unz            0
#> 1316                          upper.tri            0
#> 1317                                use            0
#> 1318                          UseMethod            0
#> 1319                          utf8ToInt            0
#> 1320                           validEnc            0
#> 1321                          validUTF8            0
#> 1322                             vapply            0
#> 1323                             vector            0
#> 1324                          Vectorize            0
#> 1325                            warning            0
#> 1326                   warningCondition            0
#> 1327                           warnings            0
#> 1328                      weekdays.Date            0
#> 1329                    weekdays.POSIXt            0
#> 1330                          which.max            0
#> 1331                          which.min            0
#> 1332                              while            0
#> 1333                       with.default            0
#> 1334                      withAutoprint            0
#> 1335                withCallingHandlers            0
#> 1336                  within.data.frame            0
#> 1337                        within.list            0
#> 1338                       withRestarts            0
#> 1339                        withVisible            0
#> 1340                          write.dcf            0
#> 1341                           writeBin            0
#> 1342                          writeChar            0
#> 1343                         writeLines            0
#> 1344                                xor            0
#> 1345                 xpdrows.data.frame            0
#> 1346                         xtfrm.AsIs            0
#> 1347                   xtfrm.data.frame            0
#> 1348                         xtfrm.Date            0
#> 1349                      xtfrm.default            0
#> 1350                     xtfrm.difftime            0
#> 1351                       xtfrm.factor            0
#> 1352              xtfrm.numeric_version            0
#> 1353                      xtfrm.POSIXct            0
#> 1354                      xtfrm.POSIXlt            0
#> 1355                             xzfile            0
#> 1356                           zapsmall            0

This brute-force code unsurprisingly identifies print() as having the greatest number of methods. A bug in s3_methods_generic() prevents its use (error below).

Error in gsub(paste0("^", generic_esc, "[.,]"), "", info$method) : 
invalid regular expression '^([.,]', reason 'Missing ')''

AR Solutions: A little experimentation (and thinking about the most popular functions) suggests that the print() generic has the most defined methods.

Let’s verify this programmatically with the tools we have learned in this and the previous chapters.

ls(all.names = TRUE, envir = baseenv()) %>%
  mget(envir = baseenv()) %>%
  keep(is_function) %>%
  names() %>%
  keep(is_s3_generic) %>%
  map(~ set_names(nrow(s3_methods_generic(.x)), .x)) %>%
  flatten_int() %>%
  sort(decreasing = TRUE) %>%
  head()
#>         print        format             [       summary  as.character 
#>           278           126            48            39            32 
#> as.data.frame 
#>            32

  1. Carefully read the documentation for UseMethod() and explain why the following code returns the results that it does. What two usual rules of function evaluation does UseMethod() violate?
g <- function(x) {
  x <- 10
  y <- 10
  UseMethod("g")
}
g.default <- function(x) c(x = x, y = y)
x <- 1
y <- 1
g(x)
#> x y 
#> 1 1

Answer: the documentation states in Technical Details:

UseMethod creates a new function call with arguments matched as they came in to the generic. Any local variables defined before the call to UseMethod are retained (unlike S).

So, UseMethod() creates a new function call where x matches x <- 1 and the local variable y <- 10 is retained. This is passed to g.default(). This violates both lazy evaluation and lexical scoping.

AR Solutions: Let’s take this step by step. If you call g.default(x) directly you get c(1, 1) as you might expect.

The value bound to x comes from the argument, the value from y comes from the global environment.

But when we call g(x) we get c(1, 10).

This is seemingly inconsistent: why does x come from the value defined inside of g(), and y still come from the global environment? It’s because UseMethod() calls g.default() in a special way so that variables defined inside the generic are available to methods. The exception are arguments supplied to the function: they are passed on as is and cannot be affected by code inside the generic.


  1. What are the arguments to [? Why is this a hard question to answer?

Answer: the possible arguments include the x, the object being extracted (or replaced), indices (i, j, ...), name, drop, exact, and value.

This is a hard question to answer since [ is an irregular primitive function that can be called in multiple ways, none of which support using all possible arguments.

AR Solutions: The subsetting operator [ is a primitive and a generic function, which can be confirmed via ftype().

ftype(`[`)
#> [1] "primitive" "generic"

For primitive functions formals([) returns NULL so we need to find another way to determine the functions arguments. One possible way to figure out [’s arguments would be to inspect the underlying C source code, which can be searched for via pryr::show_c_source(.Primitive("[")). When we inspect the arguments of some of [’s methods, we see that the arguments vary with the class of x.

names(formals(`[.data.frame`))
#> [1] "x"    "i"    "j"    "drop"
names(formals(`[.table`))
#> [1] "x"    "i"    "j"    "..."  "drop"
names(formals(`[.Date`))
#> [1] "x"    "..."  "drop"
names(formals(`[.AsIs`))
#> [1] "x"   "i"   "..."

To finally get a better overview, we have to put in a little more effort and also use s3_methods_generic() again.

s3_methods_generic("[") %>%
  filter(visible) %>%
  mutate(
    method = paste0("[.", class),
    argnames = purrr::map(method, ~ names(formals(.x))),
    args = purrr::map(method, ~ formals(.x)),
    args = purrr::map2(
      argnames, args,
      ~ paste(.x, .y, sep = " = ")
    ),
    args = purrr::set_names(args, method)
  ) %>%
  pull(args) %>%
  head()
#> $`[.AsIs`
#> [1] "x = "   "i = "   "... = "
#> 
#> $`[.data.frame`
#> [1] "x = "                                              
#> [2] "i = "                                              
#> [3] "j = "                                              
#> [4] "drop = if (missing(i)) TRUE else length(cols) == 1"
#> 
#> $`[.Date`
#> [1] "x = "        "... = "      "drop = TRUE"
#> 
#> $`[.difftime`
#> [1] "x = "        "... = "      "drop = TRUE"
#> 
#> $`[.Dlist`
#> [1] "x = "   "i = "   "... = "
#> 
#> $`[.DLLInfoList`
#> [1] "x = "   "... = "

13.5.1 Exercises

  1. Categorise the objects returned by lm(), factor(), table(), as.Date(), as.POSIXct(), ecdf(), ordered(), I() into the styles described above.

Answer:

  • lm(), ecdf(): scalar
  • factor(), as.Date(), as.POSIXct(), ordered: vector
  • table(): data frame
  • I(): same as the source object

AR Solutions: We can categorise the return values into the various object styles by observing how the number of observations is calculated: For vector style classes, length(x) represents the number of observations. Record style objects use a list of equal length elements to represent individual components. For data frames and matrices, the observations are represented by the rows. Scalar style objects use a list to represent a single thing.

This leads us to:

  • Vector object-style: factor(), table(), as.Date(), as.POSIXct(), ordered()
  • Record object-style: not observed
  • Data frame object-style: not observed
  • Scalar object-style: lm(), ecdf()

The object style of I() depends on the input since this function returns a “copy of the object with class AsIs prepended to the class(es)”.


  1. What would a constructor function for lm objects, new_lm(), look like? Use ?lm and experimentation to figure out the required fields and their types.

Answer: the only required field is formula, provided that the variables listed in the formula exist (and are both vectors). formula must be of type “formula”.

mpg <- pull(mtcars, mpg)
wt <- pull(mtcars, wt)
lm(mpg ~ wt)
#> 
#> Call:
#> lm(formula = mpg ~ wt)
#> 
#> Coefficients:
#> (Intercept)           wt  
#>      37.285       -5.344

AR Solutions: The constructor needs to populate the attributes of an lm object and check their types for correctness. Let’s start by creating a simple lm object and explore its underlying base type and attributes:

mod <- lm(cyl ~ ., data = mtcars)
typeof(mod)
#> [1] "list"
attributes(mod)
#> $names
#>  [1] "coefficients"  "residuals"     "effects"       "rank"         
#>  [5] "fitted.values" "assign"        "qr"            "df.residual"  
#>  [9] "xlevels"       "call"          "terms"         "model"        
#> 
#> $class
#> [1] "lm"

As mod is built upon a list, we can simply use map(mod, typeof) to find out the base types of its elements. (Additionally, we inspect ?lm, to learn more about the individual attributes.)

map_chr(mod, typeof)
#>  coefficients     residuals       effects          rank fitted.values 
#>      "double"      "double"      "double"     "integer"      "double" 
#>        assign            qr   df.residual       xlevels          call 
#>     "integer"        "list"     "integer"        "list"    "language" 
#>         terms         model 
#>    "language"        "list"

Now we should have enough information to write a constructor for new lm objects.

new_lm <- function(coefficients, residuals, effects, rank, fitted.values, assign,
                   qr, df.residual, xlevels, call, terms, model) {
  stopifnot(
    is.double(coefficients), is.double(residuals),
    is.double(effects), is.integer(rank), is.double(fitted.values),
    is.integer(assign), is.list(qr), is.integer(df.residual),
    is.list(xlevels), is.language(call), is.language(terms),
    is.list(model)
  )

  structure(
    list(
      coefficients = coefficients,
      residuals = residuals,
      effects = effects,
      rank = rank,
      fitted.values = fitted.values,
      assign = assign,
      qr = qr,
      df.residual = df.residual,
      xlevels = xlevels,
      call = call,
      terms = terms,
      model = model
    ),
    class = "lm"
  )
}

13.6.3 Exercises

  1. How does [.Date support subclasses? How does it fail to support subclasses?
`[.Date`
#> function (x, ..., drop = TRUE) 
#> {
#>     .Date(NextMethod("["), oldClass(x))
#> }
#> <bytecode: 0x150257bf8>
#> <environment: namespace:base>
`.Date`
#> function (xx, cl = "Date") 
#> `class<-`(xx, cl)
#> <bytecode: 0x1292f7778>
#> <environment: namespace:base>

Answer: by passing the object’s class to .Date, [.Date avoids the problem of [.secret and can return subclasses of Date. However, the .Date method can return objects that don’t contain the class Date.

AR Solutions: [.Date calls .Date with the result of calling [ on the parent class, along with oldClass():

.Date is kind of like a constructor for date classes, although it doesn’t check the input is the correct type:

oldClass() is basically the same as class(), except that it doesn’t return implicit classes, i.e. it’s basically attr(x, "class") (looking at the C code that’s exactly what it does, except that it also handles S4 objects).

As oldClass() is “basically” class(), we can rewrite [.Date to make the implementation more clear:

`[.Date` <- function(x, ..., drop = TRUE) {
  out <- NextMethod("[")
  class(out) <- class(x)
  out
}

So, [.Date ensures that the output has the same class as in the input. But what about other attributes that a subclass might possess? They get lost:

x <- structure(1:4, test = "test", class = c("myDate", "Date"))
attributes(x[1])
#> $class
#> [1] "myDate" "Date"

Note: this is a better explanation of how it fails to support subclasses; it drops non-class attributes.


  1. R has two classes for representing date time data, POSIXct and POSIXlt, which both inherit from POSIXt. Which generics have different behaviours for the two classes? Which generics share the same behaviour?

Answer: if a generic is defined for either class, it must have different behaviors. Generics that aren’t defined for either class must have the same behavior. We can get the list of generics defined for either class using sloop::s3_methods_class(). These generics have different behaviors for the two classes:

ct_generics <- s3_methods_class("POSIXct")$generic
lt_generics <- s3_methods_class("POSIXlt")$generic
defined_generics <- union(ct_generics, lt_generics)
defined_generics
#>  [1] "["             "[["            "[<-"           "as.data.frame"
#>  [5] "as.Date"       "as.list"       "as.POSIXlt"    "c"            
#>  [9] "format"        "length<-"      "mean"          "mtfrm"        
#> [13] "print"         "range"         "rep"           "split"        
#> [17] "summary"       "Summary"       "weighted.mean" "xtfrm"        
#> [21] "[[<-"          "$<-"           "anyNA"         "as.double"    
#> [25] "as.matrix"     "as.POSIXct"    "as.vector"     "duplicated"   
#> [29] "is.finite"     "is.infinite"   "is.na"         "is.nan"       
#> [33] "length"        "names"         "names<-"       "sort"         
#> [37] "unique"

We adapt work from previous exercises to get the list of all generics, and identify S3 generics that aren’t defined for either class, which must have the same behavior:

s3_generic_funs <- Filter(is_s3_generic, names(funs))
union(setdiff(defined_generics, s3_generic_funs), setdiff(s3_generic_funs, defined_generics))
#>   [1] "Summary"                  "weighted.mean"           
#>   [3] "-"                        "!="                      
#>   [5] "*"                        "/"                       
#>   [7] "&"                        "%/%"                     
#>   [9] "%%"                       "^"                       
#>  [11] "+"                        "<"                       
#>  [13] "<="                       "=="                      
#>  [15] ">"                        ">="                      
#>  [17] "|"                        "$"                       
#>  [19] "abs"                      "acos"                    
#>  [21] "acosh"                    "all"                     
#>  [23] "all.equal"                "any"                     
#>  [25] "anyDuplicated"            "aperm"                   
#>  [27] "Arg"                      "as.array"                
#>  [29] "as.call"                  "as.character"            
#>  [31] "as.complex"               "as.environment"          
#>  [33] "as.expression"            "as.function"             
#>  [35] "as.integer"               "as.logical"              
#>  [37] "as.null"                  "as.numeric"              
#>  [39] "as.raw"                   "as.single"               
#>  [41] "as.table"                 "asin"                    
#>  [43] "asinh"                    "atan"                    
#>  [45] "atanh"                    "by"                      
#>  [47] "cbind"                    "ceiling"                 
#>  [49] "chol"                     "chooseOpsMethod"         
#>  [51] "close"                    "conditionCall"           
#>  [53] "conditionMessage"         "Conj"                    
#>  [55] "cos"                      "cosh"                    
#>  [57] "cospi"                    "cummax"                  
#>  [59] "cummin"                   "cumprod"                 
#>  [61] "cumsum"                   "cut"                     
#>  [63] "determinant"              "diff"                    
#>  [65] "digamma"                  "dim"                     
#>  [67] "dim<-"                    "dimnames"                
#>  [69] "dimnames<-"               "droplevels"              
#>  [71] "exp"                      "expm1"                   
#>  [73] "floor"                    "flush"                   
#>  [75] "gamma"                    "getDLLRegisteredRoutines"
#>  [77] "Im"                       "is.array"                
#>  [79] "is.matrix"                "is.na<-"                 
#>  [81] "is.numeric"               "isSymmetric"             
#>  [83] "julian"                   "kappa"                   
#>  [85] "labels"                   "levels"                  
#>  [87] "levels<-"                 "lgamma"                  
#>  [89] "log"                      "log10"                   
#>  [91] "log1p"                    "log2"                    
#>  [93] "max"                      "merge"                   
#>  [95] "min"                      "Mod"                     
#>  [97] "months"                   "nameOfClass"             
#>  [99] "open"                     "plot"                    
#> [101] "pretty"                   "prod"                    
#> [103] "qr"                       "quarters"                
#> [105] "rbind"                    "Re"                      
#> [107] "rev"                      "round"                   
#> [109] "row.names"                "row.names<-"             
#> [111] "rowsum"                   "scale"                   
#> [113] "seek"                     "seq"                     
#> [115] "seq.int"                  "sequence"                
#> [117] "sign"                     "signif"                  
#> [119] "sin"                      "sinh"                    
#> [121] "sinpi"                    "solve"                   
#> [123] "sort_by"                  "split<-"                 
#> [125] "sqrt"                     "subset"                  
#> [127] "sum"                      "t"                       
#> [129] "tan"                      "tanh"                    
#> [131] "tanpi"                    "toString"                
#> [133] "transform"                "trigamma"                
#> [135] "trunc"                    "truncate"                
#> [137] "units"                    "units<-"                 
#> [139] "unlist"                   "weekdays"                
#> [141] "with"                     "within"

Note: this code doesn’t quite work, since Summary is a generic according to isGeneric and is not according to is_s3_generic, and weighted.mean is a non-base S3 generic.

AR Solutions: To answer this question, we have to get the respective generics

generics_t <- s3_methods_class("POSIXt")$generic
generics_ct <- s3_methods_class("POSIXct")$generic
generics_lt <- s3_methods_class("POSIXlt")$generic

The generics in generics_t with a method for the superclass POSIXt potentially share the same behaviour for both subclasses. However, if a generic has a specific method for one of the subclasses, it has to be subtracted:

# These generics provide subclass-specific methods
union(generics_ct, generics_lt)
#>  [1] "["             "[["            "[<-"           "as.data.frame"
#>  [5] "as.Date"       "as.list"       "as.POSIXlt"    "c"            
#>  [9] "format"        "length<-"      "mean"          "mtfrm"        
#> [13] "print"         "range"         "rep"           "split"        
#> [17] "summary"       "Summary"       "weighted.mean" "xtfrm"        
#> [21] "[[<-"          "$<-"           "anyNA"         "as.double"    
#> [25] "as.matrix"     "as.POSIXct"    "as.vector"     "duplicated"   
#> [29] "is.finite"     "is.infinite"   "is.na"         "is.nan"       
#> [33] "length"        "names"         "names<-"       "sort"         
#> [37] "unique"
# These generics share (inherited) methods for both subclasses
setdiff(generics_t, union(generics_ct, generics_lt))
#>  [1] "-"            "+"            "all.equal"    "as.character" "Axis"        
#>  [6] "cut"          "diff"         "hist"         "is.numeric"   "julian"      
#> [11] "Math"         "months"       "Ops"          "pretty"       "quantile"    
#> [16] "quarters"     "round"        "seq"          "str"          "trunc"       
#> [21] "weekdays"

Note: again, advanced R gives a better answer to this question, by comparing to the generics supported by the parent class.


  1. What do you expect this code to return? What does it actually return? Why?
generic2 <- function(x) UseMethod("generic2")
generic2.a1 <- function(x) "a1"
generic2.a2 <- function(x) "a2"
generic2.b <- function(x) {
  class(x) <- "a1"
  NextMethod()
}
generic2(structure(list(), class = c("b", "a2")))
#> [1] "a2"

Answer: I’d expect this code to return "a2" with a class of c("a1", "a2"). It actually returns “a2” with a class of character. This is because when generic2.b calls NextMethod(), generic2.a2 is called which returns a bare "a2", dropping the class assigned by generic2.b.

class(generic2(structure(list(), class = c("b", "a2"))))
#> [1] "character"

AR Solutions: When we execute the code above, this is what is happening:

  • we pass an object of classes b and a2 to generic2(), which prompts R to look for a methodgeneric2.b()

  • the method generic2.b() then changes the class to a1 and calls NextMethod()

  • One would think that this will lead R to call generic2.a1(), but in fact, as mentioned in Advanced R, NextMethod() > doesn’t actually work with the class attribute of the object, but instead uses a special global variable (.Class) to keep track of which method to call next.

    This is why generic2.a2() is called instead.

generic2(structure(list(), class = c("b", "a2")))
#> [1] "a2"

Let’s just double check the statement above and evaluate .Class explicitly within the generic2.b() method.

generic2.b <- function(x) {
  class(x) <- "a1"
  print(.Class)
  NextMethod()
}

generic2(structure(list(), class = c("b", "a2")))
#> [1] "b"  "a2"
#> [1] "a2"

13.7.5 Exercises

  1. Explain the differences in dispatch below:
length.integer <- function(x) 10

x1 <- 1:5
class(x1)
#> [1] "integer"
s3_dispatch(length(x1))
#>  * length.integer
#>    length.numeric
#>    length.default
#> => length (internal)
x2 <- structure(x1, class = "integer")
class(x2)
#> [1] "integer"
s3_dispatch(length(x2))
#> => length.integer
#>    length.default
#>  * length (internal)

Answer: x1 dispatches using implicit class, which is c("integer", "numeric"). x2 has an explicit class, so it is dispatched to length.integer.

s3_class(x1)
#> [1] "integer" "numeric"
s3_class(x2)
#> [1] "integer"

AR Solutions: class() returns integer in both cases. However, while the class of x1 is created implicitly and inherits from the numeric class, the class of x2 is set explicitly. This is important because length() is an internal generic and internal generics only dispatch to methods when the class attribute has been set, i.e. internal generics do not use implicit classes.

An object has no explicit class if attr(x, "class") returns NULL:

attr(x1, "class")
#> NULL
attr(x2, "class")
#> [1] "integer"

To see the relevant classes for the S3 dispatch, one can use sloop::s3_class():

s3_class(x1) # implicit
#> [1] "integer" "numeric"
s3_class(x2) # explicit
#> [1] "integer"

For a better understanding of s3_dipatch()’s output we quote from ?s3_dispatch: - => method exists and is found by UseMethod(). - -> method exists and is used by NextMethod(). - * method exists but is not used. - Nothing (and greyed out in console): method does not exist.

Note: AR Solutions includes an additional important detail, that “internal generics only dispatch to methods when the class attribute has been set”, which explains why the internal generic is used for x1.


  1. What classes have a method for the Math group generic in base R? Read the source code. How do the methods work?

Answer: four base classes have a method for Math: data.frame, Date, difftime, factor, and POSIXt.

s3_methods_generic("Math") |>
  filter(source == "base")
#> # A tibble: 5 × 4
#>   generic class      visible source
#>   <chr>   <chr>      <lgl>   <chr> 
#> 1 Math    data.frame TRUE    base  
#> 2 Math    Date       TRUE    base  
#> 3 Math    difftime   TRUE    base  
#> 4 Math    factor     TRUE    base  
#> 5 Math    POSIXt     TRUE    base
Math.data.frame
#> function (x, ...) 
#> {
#>     mode.ok <- vapply(x, function(x) is.numeric(x) || is.logical(x) || 
#>         is.complex(x), NA)
#>     if (all(mode.ok)) {
#>         x[] <- lapply(X = x, FUN = .Generic, ...)
#>         return(x)
#>     }
#>     else {
#>         vnames <- names(x)
#>         if (is.null(vnames)) 
#>             vnames <- seq_along(x)
#>         stop("non-numeric-alike variable(s) in data frame: ", 
#>             paste(vnames[!mode.ok], collapse = ", "))
#>     }
#> }
#> <bytecode: 0x103a7dc98>
#> <environment: namespace:base>
Math.Date
#> function (x, ...) 
#> stop(gettextf("%s not defined for \"Date\" objects", .Generic), 
#>     domain = NA)
#> <bytecode: 0x103a84df8>
#> <environment: namespace:base>
Math.difftime
#> function (x, ...) 
#> {
#>     switch(.Generic, abs = , sign = , floor = , ceiling = , trunc = , 
#>         round = , signif = {
#>             units <- attr(x, "units")
#>             .difftime(NextMethod(), units)
#>         }, stop(gettextf("'%s' not defined for \"difftime\" objects", 
#>             .Generic), domain = NA))
#> }
#> <bytecode: 0x103a8a8c0>
#> <environment: namespace:base>
Math.factor
#> function (x, ...) 
#> stop(gettextf("%s not meaningful for factors", sQuote(.Generic)))
#> <bytecode: 0x103a897b0>
#> <environment: namespace:base>
Math.POSIXt
#> function (x, ...) 
#> {
#>     stop(gettextf("'%s' not defined for \"POSIXt\" objects", 
#>         .Generic), domain = NA)
#> }
#> <bytecode: 0x103a90fd0>
#> <environment: namespace:base>
  • Math.data.frame performs math if all columns (variables) are either numeric, logical or complex, and errors if any are not
  • Math.difftime performs only certain math functions: abs, sign, floor, ceiling, trunc, round, and signif, and errors for other functions
  • Math.Date, Math.factor, and Math.POSIXt always error

AR Solutions: : The following functions belong to this group (see ?Math):

  • abs, sign, sqrt, floor, ceiling, trunc, round, signif
  • exp, log, expm1, log1p, cos, sin, tan, cospi, sinpi, tanpi, acos, asin, atan, cosh, sinh, tanh, acosh, asinh, atanh
  • lgamma, gamma, digamma, trigamma
  • cumsum, cumprod, cummax, cummin

The following classes have a method for this group generic:

s3_methods_generic("Math")
#> # A tibble: 8 × 4
#>   generic class      visible source             
#>   <chr>   <chr>      <lgl>   <chr>              
#> 1 Math    data.frame TRUE    base               
#> 2 Math    Date       TRUE    base               
#> 3 Math    difftime   TRUE    base               
#> 4 Math    factor     TRUE    base               
#> 5 Math    POSIXt     TRUE    base               
#> 6 Math    quosure    FALSE   registered S3method
#> 7 Math    vctrs_sclr FALSE   registered S3method
#> 8 Math    vctrs_vctr FALSE   registered S3method

To explain the basic idea, we just overwrite the data frame method:

Math.data.frame <- function(x) "hello"

Now all functions from the math generic group, will return "hello"

abs(mtcars)
#> [1] "hello"
exp(mtcars)
#> [1] "hello"
lgamma(mtcars)
#> [1] "hello"

Of course, different functions should perform different calculations. Here .Generic comes into play, which provides us with the calling generic as a string

Math.data.frame <- function(x, ...) {
  .Generic
}
abs(mtcars)
#> [1] "abs"
exp(mtcars)
#> [1] "exp"
lgamma(mtcars)
#> [1] "lgamma"
rm(Math.data.frame)

The original source code of Math.data.frame() is a good example on how to invoke the string returned by .Generic into a specific method. Math.factor() is a good example of a method, which is simply defined for better error messages.

Note: I prefer my answer to the AR Solutions answer.


  1. Math.difftime() is more complicated than I described. Why?

Answer: the explanation in the text omits the fact that Math.difftime() first checks that the math function being called.

AR Solutions: Math.difftime() also excludes cases apart from abs, sign, floor, ceiling, trunc, round and signif and needs to return a fitting error message.


14 R6

rm(list = ls())

This chapter describes the R6 OOP system. R6 has two special properties:

  • It uses the encapsulated OOP paradigm, which means that methods belong to objects, not generics, and you call them like object$method().

  • R6 objects are mutable, which means that they are modified in place, and hence have reference semantics.

If you’ve learned OOP in another programming language, it’s likely that R6 will feel very natural, and you’ll be inclined to prefer it over S3. Resist the temptation to follow the path of least resistance: in most cases R6 will lead you to non-idiomatic R code. We’ll come back to this theme in Section 16.3.

R6 is very similar to a base OOP system called reference classes, or RC for short. I describe why I teach R6 and not RC in Section 14.5.

14.2.6 Exercises

  1. Create a bank account R6 class that stores a balance and allows you to deposit and withdraw money. Create a subclass that throws an error if you attempt to go into overdraft. Create another subclass that allows you to go into overdraft, but charges you a fee.

Answer: Account stores a balance as an integer value of cents, and prints in dollars (to avoid problems with floating point math).

Account <- R6Class("Account", list(
  balance = 0L,
  initialize = function(balance = 0L) {
    stopifnot(is.integer(balance), length(balance) == 1)
    self$balance <- balance
  },
  print = function(...) {
    cat("Account: \n")
    cat("  Balance: $", format(self$balance / 100, nsmall = 2), "\n", sep = "")
    invisible(self)
  },
  deposit = function(value) {
    stopifnot(is.integer(value), length(value) == 1)
    self$balance <- self$balance + value
    invisible(self)
  },
  withdraw = function(value) {
    stopifnot(is.integer(value), length(value) == 1)
    self$balance <- self$balance - value
    invisible(self)
  }
))

AccountOverdraft <- R6Class("AccountOverdraft",
  inherit = Account,
  public = list(
    withdraw = function(value) {
      stopifnot(value <= self$balance)
      super$withdraw(value)
    }
  )
)

AccountOverdraftFee <- R6Class("AccountOverdraftFee",
  inherit = Account,
  public = list(
    withdraw = function(value) {
      if (value > self$balance) value <- value + 500L
      super$withdraw(value)
    }
  )
)

try(Account$new(1.5))
#> Error in initialize(...) : is.integer(balance) is not TRUE
a <- Account$new(100L)
a$deposit(100L)
a$withdraw(250L)
a
#> Account: 
#>   Balance: $-0.50
a2 <- AccountOverdraft$new(200L)
try(a2$withdraw(250L))
#> Error in a2$withdraw(250L) : value <= self$balance is not TRUE
a2$withdraw(150L)
a2
#> Account: 
#>   Balance: $0.50
a3 <- AccountOverdraftFee$new(200L)
a3$withdraw(250L)
a3
#> Account: 
#>   Balance: $-5.50

AR Solutions: BankAccount is a similar, simpler approach:

BankAccount <- R6Class(
  classname = "BankAccount",
  public = list(
    balance = 0,
    deposit = function(dep = 0) {
      self$balance <- self$balance + dep
      invisible(self)
    },
    withdraw = function(draw) {
      self$balance <- self$balance - draw
      invisible(self)
    }
  )
)

BankAccountStrict <- R6Class(
  classname = "BankAccountStrict",
  inherit = BankAccount,
  public = list(
    withdraw = function(draw = 0) {
      if (self$balance - draw < 0) {
        stop("Your `withdraw` must be smaller ",
          "than your `balance`.",
          call. = FALSE
        )
      }
      super$withdraw(draw = draw)
    }
  )
)

BankAccountCharging <- R6Class(
  classname = "BankAccountCharging",
  inherit = BankAccount,
  public = list(
    withdraw = function(draw = 0) {
      if (self$balance - draw < 0) {
        draw <- draw + 1
      }
      super$withdraw(draw = draw)
    }
  )
)

Note: my object name, AccountOverdraftFee is misleading, since it is not a subclass of AccountOverdraft - the R Solutions naming convention is clearer.


  1. Create an R6 class that represents a shuffled deck of cards. You should be able to draw cards from the deck with $draw(n), and return all cards to the deck and reshuffle with $reshuffle(). Use the following code to make a vector of cards.
suit <- c("♠", "♥", "♦", "♣")
value <- c("A", 2:10, "J", "Q", "K")
cards <- paste0(rep(value, 4), suit)

Answer: Cards shuffles the deck using sample(). The draw() function prints the cards drawn and moves them into play.

Cards <- R6Class("Cards", list(
  deck = sample(cards, 52),
  play = NULL,
  print = function(...) {
    cat("Cards: \n")
    cat("  Deck:", self$deck, "\n", sep = " ")
    cat("  Play:", self$play, "\n", sep = " ")
    invisible(self)
  },
  draw = function(n = 1L) {
    stopifnot(is.integer(n), length(n) == 1, n > 0, n <= length(self$deck))
    d <- head(self$deck, n)
    self$play <- c(self$play, d)
    self$deck <- tail(self$deck, -n)
    invisible(self)
  },
  reshuffle = function() {
    self$deck <- sample(cards, 52)
    self$play <- NULL
    invisible(self)
  }
))

d <- Cards$new()
d
#> Cards: 
#>   Deck: 5♣ K♠ 2♣ 9♣ K♥ 2♥ 9♠ 3♥ Q♣ 6♥ 8♥ 8♦ 7♠ 4♠ A♠ J♥ A♣ 9♦ 3♣ 5♦ 7♥ K♣ 3♠ Q♦ A♥ 5♠ 8♣ 4♦ Q♥ 7♣ 10♥ 3♦ 5♥ 7♦ J♠ 9♥ K♦ 2♦ 2♠ A♦ Q♠ 6♠ 6♦ 10♣ 8♠ 4♣ 10♠ J♦ 10♦ 6♣ J♣ 4♥ 
#>   Play:
try(d$draw(1.5))
#> Error in d$draw(1.5) : is.integer(n) is not TRUE
try(d$draw(0L))
#> Error in d$draw(0L) : n > 0 is not TRUE
try(d$draw(53L))
#> Error in d$draw(53L) : n <= length(self$deck) is not TRUE
d$draw(13L)
d
#> Cards: 
#>   Deck: 4♠ A♠ J♥ A♣ 9♦ 3♣ 5♦ 7♥ K♣ 3♠ Q♦ A♥ 5♠ 8♣ 4♦ Q♥ 7♣ 10♥ 3♦ 5♥ 7♦ J♠ 9♥ K♦ 2♦ 2♠ A♦ Q♠ 6♠ 6♦ 10♣ 8♠ 4♣ 10♠ J♦ 10♦ 6♣ J♣ 4♥ 
#>   Play: 5♣ K♠ 2♣ 9♣ K♥ 2♥ 9♠ 3♥ Q♣ 6♥ 8♥ 8♦ 7♠
d$draw(13L)
d
#> Cards: 
#>   Deck: 8♣ 4♦ Q♥ 7♣ 10♥ 3♦ 5♥ 7♦ J♠ 9♥ K♦ 2♦ 2♠ A♦ Q♠ 6♠ 6♦ 10♣ 8♠ 4♣ 10♠ J♦ 10♦ 6♣ J♣ 4♥ 
#>   Play: 5♣ K♠ 2♣ 9♣ K♥ 2♥ 9♠ 3♥ Q♣ 6♥ 8♥ 8♦ 7♠ 4♠ A♠ J♥ A♣ 9♦ 3♣ 5♦ 7♥ K♣ 3♠ Q♦ A♥ 5♠
d$reshuffle()
d
#> Cards: 
#>   Deck: K♠ Q♠ 9♠ 4♠ 5♣ 7♥ 10♥ 6♠ A♥ K♣ 8♦ 5♠ 6♣ J♠ J♦ 7♦ 2♠ 6♥ 2♦ 2♣ 10♣ A♣ 4♦ A♠ 8♠ J♥ K♥ 4♣ Q♥ 9♣ 9♥ 3♦ 6♦ 3♠ 8♣ 5♦ A♦ Q♦ 7♠ 3♣ 3♥ 4♥ 7♣ 5♥ J♣ 9♦ 2♥ 10♦ Q♣ 8♥ K♦ 10♠ 
#>   Play:

AR Solutions: Our new ShuffledDeck class will use sample() and positive integer subsetting to implement the reshuffling and drawing functionality. We also add a check, so you cannot draw more cards than there are left in the deck.

ShuffledDeck <- R6Class(
  classname = "ShuffledDeck",
  public = list(
    deck = NULL,
    initialize = function(deck = cards) {
      self$deck <- sample(deck)
    },
    reshuffle = function() {
      self$deck <- sample(cards)
      invisible(self)
    },
    n = function() {
      length(self$deck)
    },
    draw = function(n = 1) {
      if (n > self$n()) {
        stop("Only ", self$n(), " cards remaining.", call. = FALSE)
      }

      output <- self$deck[seq_len(n)]
      self$deck <- self$deck[-seq_len(n)]
      output
    }
  )
)

Notes: it seems simpler to set deck directly instead of using an initialize function, although sample(cards) is cleaner. self$n() is a useful function, and the choice of removing and returning cards with draw() is probably a better design. I prefer my approach using head() and tail() over R Solutions use of seq_len().

Bug: per 14.4.3 setting fields directly fixes the order when the class is defined. This results in a bug: Cards has the same starting shuffle for each new object, but ShuffledDeck does not:

Cards$new()
#> Cards: 
#>   Deck: 5♣ K♠ 2♣ 9♣ K♥ 2♥ 9♠ 3♥ Q♣ 6♥ 8♥ 8♦ 7♠ 4♠ A♠ J♥ A♣ 9♦ 3♣ 5♦ 7♥ K♣ 3♠ Q♦ A♥ 5♠ 8♣ 4♦ Q♥ 7♣ 10♥ 3♦ 5♥ 7♦ J♠ 9♥ K♦ 2♦ 2♠ A♦ Q♠ 6♠ 6♦ 10♣ 8♠ 4♣ 10♠ J♦ 10♦ 6♣ J♣ 4♥ 
#>   Play:
Cards$new()
#> Cards: 
#>   Deck: 5♣ K♠ 2♣ 9♣ K♥ 2♥ 9♠ 3♥ Q♣ 6♥ 8♥ 8♦ 7♠ 4♠ A♠ J♥ A♣ 9♦ 3♣ 5♦ 7♥ K♣ 3♠ Q♦ A♥ 5♠ 8♣ 4♦ Q♥ 7♣ 10♥ 3♦ 5♥ 7♦ J♠ 9♥ K♦ 2♦ 2♠ A♦ Q♠ 6♠ 6♦ 10♣ 8♠ 4♣ 10♠ J♦ 10♦ 6♣ J♣ 4♥ 
#>   Play:
ShuffledDeck$new()$draw(52)
#>  [1] "K♥"  "4♠"  "7♥"  "9♠"  "9♥"  "6♥"  "Q♦"  "4♦"  "9♦"  "J♦"  "A♠"  "10♠"
#> [13] "4♥"  "K♣"  "8♥"  "3♠"  "8♣"  "3♣"  "A♦"  "6♣"  "K♠"  "J♠"  "3♥"  "2♥" 
#> [25] "3♦"  "5♥"  "J♥"  "J♣"  "2♠"  "7♠"  "A♥"  "5♠"  "Q♥"  "Q♣"  "6♦"  "7♦" 
#> [37] "10♥" "5♣"  "5♦"  "6♠"  "4♣"  "2♦"  "9♣"  "10♣" "2♣"  "7♣"  "K♦"  "A♣" 
#> [49] "10♦" "8♠"  "8♦"  "Q♠"
ShuffledDeck$new()$draw(52)
#>  [1] "8♣"  "6♠"  "3♠"  "4♥"  "J♥"  "Q♣"  "J♣"  "8♦"  "5♦"  "K♠"  "10♣" "K♣" 
#> [13] "2♦"  "Q♥"  "A♦"  "9♠"  "7♦"  "3♥"  "7♣"  "9♦"  "A♥"  "J♠"  "8♥"  "A♣" 
#> [25] "8♠"  "7♠"  "K♥"  "5♥"  "2♣"  "2♥"  "5♠"  "10♠" "3♦"  "4♣"  "A♠"  "Q♠" 
#> [37] "9♥"  "9♣"  "6♥"  "10♥" "K♦"  "7♥"  "2♠"  "Q♦"  "3♣"  "10♦" "4♠"  "6♣" 
#> [49] "4♦"  "5♣"  "6♦"  "J♦"

  1. Why can’t you model a bank account or a deck of cards with an S3 class?

Answer: because S3 classes are copied-on-modify, they lack state. R6 classes are stateful since they are modified in-place. Both bank accounts and a deck of cards are stateful objects.

AR Solutions: Because S3 classes obey R’s usual semantics of copy-on-modify: every time you deposit money into your bank account or draw a card from the deck, you’d get a new copy of the object.

It is possible to combine S3 classes with an environment (which is how R6 works), but it is ill-advised to create an object that looks like a regular R object but has reference semantics.


  1. Create an R6 class that allows you to get and set the current time zone. You can access the current time zone with Sys.timezone() and set it with Sys.setenv(TZ = "newtimezone"). When setting the time zone, make sure the new time zone is in the list provided by OlsonNames().

Answer: TimeZone is initialized with the current time zone, stored as tz in the object.

orig_tz <- Sys.timezone()

TimeZone <- R6Class("TimeZone", list(
  tz = Sys.timezone(),
  get = function() {
    cat("Current time zone: ", self$tz, "\n", sep = "")
    invisible(self)
  },
  set = function(tz) {
    stopifnot(tz %in% OlsonNames())
    Sys.setenv(TZ = tz)
    self$tz <- tz
    cat("Set time zone: ", self$tz, "\n", sep = "")
    invisible(self)
  }
))

tz <- TimeZone$new()
tz$get()
#> Current time zone: America/Chicago
date()
#> [1] "Wed Jun  5 12:54:37 2024"
tz$set("America/New_York")
#> Set time zone: America/New_York
date()
#> [1] "Wed Jun  5 13:54:37 2024"
Sys.setenv(TZ = orig_tz)

Bug: like Cards, TimeZone should set tz in initialize().

AR Solutions: To create an R6 class that allows us to get and set the time zone, we provide the respective functions as public methods to the R6 class.

Timezone <- R6Class(
  classname = "Timezone",
  public = list(
    get = function() {
      Sys.timezone()
    },
    set = function(value) {
      stopifnot(value %in% OlsonNames())
      old <- self$get()
      Sys.setenv(TZ = value)
      invisible(old)
    }
  )
)

(When setting, we return the old value invisibly because this makes it easy to restore the previous value.)


  1. Create an R6 class that manages the current working directory. It should have $get() and $set() methods.

Answer: similar to TimeZone, WorkingDirectory initializes wd to getwd().

orig_wd <- getwd()

WorkingDirectory <- R6Class("WorkingDirectory", list(
  wd = getwd(),
  get = function() {
    cat("Current directory: ", self$wd, "\n", sep = "")
    invisible(self)
  },
  set = function(dir) {
    self$wd <- setwd(dir)
    cat("Set directory: ", self$wd, "\n", sep = "")
    invisible(self)
  }
))

wd <- WorkingDirectory$new()
wd$get()
#> Current directory: /Users/agamemnon/GitHub/rtraining/analysis
wd$set("assets")
#> Set directory: /Users/agamemnon/GitHub/rtraining/analysis
list.files()
#> [1] "extra.css"       "recursive-1.png" "recursive-2.png"
setwd(orig_wd)

AR Solutions: Take a look at the following implementation, which is quite minimalistic:

WorkingDirectory <- R6Class(
  classname = "WorkingDirectory",
  public = list(
    get = function() {
      getwd()
    },
    set = function(value) {
      setwd(value)
    }
  )
)

Bug: like Cards, WorkingDirectory should set wd in initialize(). Also, as AR Solutions notes in a comment:

You should never do get = getwd() etc because in packages, that inlines the function definition at package build time, creating a subtle dependency that will cause bugs that are extremely difficult to track down


  1. Why can’t you model the time zone or current working directory with an S3 class?

Answer: per exercise 3, time zone and current working directory are both stateful.

AR Solutions: Because S3 classes are not suitable for modelling a state that changes over time. S3 methods should (almost) always return the same result when called with the same inputs.


  1. What base type are R6 objects built on top of? What attributes do they have?

Answer: R6n objects are built on environments, and have a class attribute with an S3 hierarchy including the base R6 class, per 14.2.5.

typeof(tz)
#> [1] "environment"
attributes(tz)
#> $class
#> [1] "TimeZone" "R6"

AR Solutions: R6 objects are built on top of environments. They have a class attribute, which is a character vector containing the class name, the name of any super classes (if existent) and the string "R6" as the last element.


14.3.3 Exercises

  1. Create a bank account class that prevents you from directly setting the account balance, but you can still withdraw from and deposit to. Throw an error if you attempt to go into overdraft.

Answer: SecureAccount uses a private internal balance exposed through an active function.

SecureAccount <- R6Class("SecureAccount",
  private = list(
    .balance = 0L
  ),
  public = list(
    deposit = function(value) {
      stopifnot(is.integer(value), length(value) == 1)
      private$.balance <- private$.balance + value
      invisible(self)
    },
    withdraw = function(value) {
      stopifnot(is.integer(value), length(value) == 1, value <= private$.balance)
      private$.balance <- private$.balance - value
      invisible(self)
    }
  ),
  active = list(
    balance = function(value) {
      if (missing(value)) {
        private$.balance
      } else {
        stop("`$balance` is read only", call. = FALSE)
      }
    }
  )
)

sa <- SecureAccount$new()
sa$deposit(10L)
sa$withdraw(5L)
try(sa$withdraw(20L))
#> Error in sa$withdraw(20L) : value <= private$.balance is not TRUE
try(sa$balance <- 100L)
#> Error : `$balance` is read only
sa$balance
#> [1] 5

AR Solutions: To fulfill this requirement, we make balance a private field. The user has to use the $deposit() and $withdraw() methods which have access to the balance field.

BankAccountStrict2 <- R6Class(
  classname = "BankAccountStrict2",
  public = list(
    deposit = function(dep = 0) {
      private$balance <- private$balance + dep
      invisible(self)
    },
    withdraw = function(draw = 0) {
      if (private$balance - draw < 0) {
        stop(
          "Your `withdraw` must be smaller ",
          "than your `balance`.",
          call. = FALSE
        )
      }
      private$balance <- private$balance - draw
      invisible(self)
    }
  ),
  private = list(
    balance = 0
  )
)

  1. Create a class with a write-only $password field. It should have $check_password(password) method that returns TRUE or FALSE, but there should be no way to view the complete password.

Answer: Login implements a write-only $password field using an active function. check_password() will error if a password hasn’t been set. In real life, this should be implemented with a secure password hashing function, like bcrypt or scrypt.

Login <- R6Class("Login",
  private = list(
    .password = NULL
  ),
  public = list(
    check_password = function(password) {
      stopifnot(is.character(password), length(password) == 1)
      if (is.null(private$.password)) stop("Error: password not set")
      password == private$.password
    }
  ),
  active = list(
    password = function(value) {
      if (missing(value)) {
        stop("`$password` is write only", call. = FALSE)
      } else {
        stopifnot(is.character(value), length(value) == 1)
        private$.password <- value
        invisible(self)
      }
    }
  )
)

l <- Login$new()
try(l$check_password("Password1"))
#> Error in l$check_password("Password1") : Error: password not set
l$password <- "Password1"
l$check_password("Password1")
#> [1] TRUE
l$check_password("Password2")
#> [1] FALSE
try(l$password)
#> Error : `$password` is write only

AR Solutions: To protect the password from changes and direct access, the password will be a private field. Further, our Password will get its own print method which hides the password.

Password <- R6Class(
  classname = "Password",
  public = list(
    print = function(...) {
      cat("<Password>: ********\n")
      invisible(self)
    },
    set = function(value) {
      private$password <- value
    },
    check = function(password) {
      identical(password, private$password)
    }
  ),
  private = list(
    password = NULL
  )
)

Let’s create one instance of our new class and confirm that the password is neither accessible nor visible, but still check-able.

my_pw <- Password$new()
my_pw$set("snuffles")
my_pw$password
#> NULL
my_pw
#> <Password>: ********
my_pw$check("snuggles")
#> [1] FALSE
my_pw$check("snuffles")
#> [1] TRUE

Note: the AR Solutions class properly masks the password when calling print(), but mine does not:

l
#> <Login>
#>   Public:
#>     check_password: function (password) 
#>     clone: function (deep = FALSE) 
#>     password: active binding
#>   Private:
#>     .password: Password1

  1. Extend the Rando class with another active binding that allows you to access the previous random value. Ensure that active binding is the only way to access the value.

Answer: the updated Rando class sets a private value when random is run that is accessible only through previous, initially set to NA.

Rando <- R6::R6Class("Rando",
  private = list(
    .previous = NA
  ),
  active = list(
    random = function(value) {
      if (missing(value)) {
        private$.previous <- runif(1)
        private$.previous
      } else {
        stop("Can't set `$random`", call. = FALSE)
      }
    },
    previous = function(value) {
      if (missing(value)) {
        private$.previous
      } else {
        stop("Can't set `$previous`", call. = FALSE)
      }
    }
  )
)
x <- Rando$new()

x$previous
#> [1] NA
x$random
#> [1] 0.9643438
x$previous
#> [1] 0.9643438
x$random
#> [1] 0.1186832
x$previous
#> [1] 0.1186832

AR Solutions: To access the previous random value from an instance, we add a private $last_random field to our class, and we modify $random() to write to this field, whenever it is called. To access the $last_random field we provide $previous().

Rando <- R6::R6Class(
  classname = "Rando",
  private = list(
    last_random = NULL
  ),
  active = list(
    random = function(value) {
      if (missing(value)) {
        private$last_random <- runif(1)
        private$last_random
      } else {
        stop("Can't set `$random`.", call. = FALSE)
      }
    },
    previous = function(value) {
      if (missing(value)) {
        private$last_random
      }
    }
  )
)

  1. Can subclasses access private fields/methods from their parent? Perform an experiment to find out.

Answer: LoginEvil shows that subclasses can access private fields from their parent.

LoginEvil <- R6Class("LoginEvil",
  inherit = Login,
  public = list(
    steal_password = function() {
      cat("The password is: ", private$.password, "\n", sep = "")
    }
  )
)

evil <- LoginEvil$new()
evil$password <- "SuperSecretPassword"
evil$steal_password()
#> The password is: SuperSecretPassword

AR Solutions: To find out if private fields/methods can be accessed from subclasses, we first create a class A with a private field foo and a private method bar(). Afterwards, an instance of a subclass B is created and calls the foobar() methods, which tries to access the foo field and the bar() method from its superclass A.

A <- R6Class(
  classname = "A",
  private = list(
    field = "foo",
    method = function() {
      "bar"
    }
  )
)
B <- R6Class(
  classname = "B",
  inherit = A,
  public = list(
    test = function() {
      cat("Field:  ", super$field, "\n", sep = "")
      cat("Method: ", super$method(), "\n", sep = "")
    }
  )
)
B$new()$test()
#> Field:  
#> Method: bar

We conclude that subclasses can access private methods from their superclasses, but not private fields.

Note: as I discovered, private fields are not accessible through super$, but are accessible through private$.


14.4.4 Exercises

  1. Create a class that allows you to write a line to a specified file. You should open a connection to the file in $initialize(), append a line using cat() in $append_line(), and close the connection in $finalize().

Answer: WriteFile implemented below.

WriteFile <- R6Class("WriteFile", list(
  wfile = NULL,
  initialize = function(filename) {
    self$wfile <- file(filename, "a")
  },
  append_line = function(line) {
    cat(line, file = self$wfile)
  },
  finalize = function() {
    close(self$wfile)
  }
))

tmp <- tempfile()
wf <- WriteFile$new(tmp)
wf$append_line("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.\n")
readLines(tmp)
#> [1] "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

AR Solutions: Our FileWriter class will create a connection to a file at initialization. Therefore, we open a connection to a user specified file during the initialisation. Note that we need to set open = "a" in file() to open connection for appending text. Otherwise, cat() would only work when applied to files, but not with connections as explicitly asked for in the exercise. Further, we add the append_line() method and a close() statement as finalizer.

FileWriter <- R6::R6Class(
  classname = "FileWriter",
  public = list(
    con = NULL,
    initialize = function(filename) {
      self$con <- file(filename, open = "a")
    },
    finalize = function() {
      close(self$con)
    },
    append_line = function(x) {
      cat(x, "\n", sep = "", file = self$con)
    }
  )
)

15 S4

rm(list = ls())

S4 provides a formal approach to functional OOP. The underlying ideas are similar to S3 (the topic of Chapter 13), but implementation is much stricter and makes use of specialised functions for creating classes (setClass()), generics (setGeneric()), and methods (setMethod()). Additionally, S4 provides both multiple inheritance (i.e. a class can have multiple parents) and multiple dispatch (i.e. method dispatch can use the class of multiple arguments).

An important new component of S4 is the slot, a named component of the object that is accessed using the specialised subsetting operator @ (pronounced at). The set of slots, and their classes, forms an important part of the definition of an S4 class.

15.2.1 Exercises

  1. lubridate::period() returns an S4 class. What slots does it have? What class is each slot? What accessors does it provide?

Answer: the S4 class, Period, has 6 slots: .Data, year, month, day, hour, and minute, all numeric. I couldn’t figure out how to get the accessors.

p <- lubridate::period()
is(p)
#> [1] "Period"   "Timespan" "numeric"  "vector"
vapply(slotNames(p), function(x) class(slot(p, x)), character(1))
#>     .Data      year     month       day      hour    minute 
#> "numeric" "numeric" "numeric" "numeric" "numeric" "numeric"

AR Solutions: Objects of the S4 Period class have six slots named year, month, day, hour, minute, and .Data (which contains the number of seconds). All slots are of type double. Most fields can be retrieved by an identically named accessor (e.g. lubridate::year() will return the field), use second() to get the .Data slot.

As a short example, we create a period of 1 second, 2 minutes, 3 hours, 4 days and 5 weeks.

example_12345 <- lubridate::period(
  c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5),
  c("second", "minute", "hour", "day", "week")
)

This should add up to a period of 39 days, 3 hours, 2 minutes and 1 second.

example_12345
#> [1] "39d 3H 2M 1S"

When we inspect example_12345, we see the fields and infer that the seconds are stored in the .Data field.

str(example_12345)
#> Formal class 'Period' [package "lubridate"] with 6 slots
#>   ..@ .Data : num 1
#>   ..@ year  : num 0
#>   ..@ month : num 0
#>   ..@ day   : num 39
#>   ..@ hour  : num 3
#>   ..@ minute: num 2

Notes: it is easier to just use getClass to enumerate slots and slot classes:

getClass(is(lubridate::period()))
#> Class "Period" [package "lubridate"]
#> 
#> Slots:
#>                                                       
#> Name:    .Data    year   month     day    hour  minute
#> Class: numeric numeric numeric numeric numeric numeric
#> 
#> Extends: 
#> Class "Timespan", directly
#> Class "numeric", from data part
#> Class "vector", by class "numeric", distance 2

Methods defined for a particular class can be listed using showMethods(), and S4 methods can be listed using .S4methods():

.S4methods("Period")
#> no methods found

Period has no S4 methods, only regular functions.


  1. What other ways can you find help for a method? Read ?"?" and summarise the details.

Answer: there are three ways to get help for a method:

  1. ?function provides the function documentation
  2. methods?function provides the overall documentation methods for the function
  3. methods?function(signature) provides the documentation for a specific method

AR Solutions: Besides adding ? in front of a function call (i.e. ?method()), we may find:

  • general documentation for a generic via ?genericName
  • general documentation for the methods of a generic via methods?genericName
  • documentation for a specific method via ClassName?methodName.

15.3.6 Exercises

  1. Extend the Person class with fields to match utils::person(). Think about what slots you will need, what class each slot should have, and what you’ll need to check in your validity method.

Answer: the Person class uses the fields from utils::person(), excluding deprecated fields. Per the docs, family must be a string (length 1), others can be vectors (but this is not enforced).

setClass("Person",
  slots = c(
    given = "character",
    family = "character",
    email = "character",
    role = "character",
    comment = "character"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    given = NA_character_,
    family = NA_character_,
    email = NA_character_,
    role = NA_character_,
    comment = NA_character_
  )
)

setValidity("Person", function(object) {
  # regex from https://www.nicebread.de/validating-email-adresses-in-r/
  regex <- "\\<[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\\.[A-Z]{2,}\\>"

  if (length(object@family) > 1) {
    "@family must be a string (length 1)"
  } else if (!is.na(object@email) & !grepl(regex, object@email, ignore.case = TRUE)) {
    "invalid @email"
  } else {
    TRUE
  }
}) |>
  invisible()

Person <- function(given = NA_character_, family = NA_character_,
                   email = NA_character_, role = NA_character_, comment = NA_character_) {
  given <- as.character(given)
  family <- as.character(family)
  email <- as.character(email)
  role <- as.character(role)
  comment <- as.character(comment)

  new("Person", given = given, family = family, email = email, role = role, comment = comment)
}

Person("John", "Benninghoff", email = "john@example.com", comment = 51)
#> An object of class "Person"
#> Slot "given":
#> [1] "John"
#> 
#> Slot "family":
#> [1] "Benninghoff"
#> 
#> Slot "email":
#> [1] "john@example.com"
#> 
#> Slot "role":
#> [1] NA
#> 
#> Slot "comment":
#> [1] "51"
try(Person("John", c("Three", "Last", "Names")))
#> Error in validObject(.Object) : 
#>   invalid class "Person" object: @family must be a string (length 1)
try(Person("John", email = "invalid@local"))
#> Error in validObject(.Object) : 
#>   invalid class "Person" object: invalid @email

AR Solutions: The Person class from Advanced R contains the slots name and age. The person class from the {utils} package contains the slots given (vector of given names), family, role, email and comment (see ?utils::person).

All slots from utils::person() besides role must be of type character and length 1. The entries in the role slot must match one of the following abbreviations “aut”, “com”, “cph”, “cre”, “ctb”, “ctr”, “dtc”, “fnd”, “rev”, “ths”, “trl”. Therefore, role might be of different length than the other slots and we’ll add a corresponding constraint within the validator.

# Definition of the Person class
setClass("Person",
  slots = c(
    age = "numeric",
    given = "character",
    family = "character",
    role = "character",
    email = "character",
    comment = "character"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    age = NA_real_,
    given = NA_character_,
    family = NA_character_,
    role = NA_character_,
    email = NA_character_,
    comment = NA_character_
  )
)
# Helper to create instances of the Person class
Person <- function(given, family,
                   age = NA_real_,
                   role = NA_character_,
                   email = NA_character_,
                   comment = NA_character_) {
  age <- as.double(age)
  new("Person",
    age = age,
    given = given,
    family = family,
    role = role,
    email = email,
    comment = comment
  )
}
# Validator to ensure that each slot is of length one
setValidity("Person", function(object) { # nolint: cyclocomp_linter.
  invalids <- character(0)
  if (length(object@age) != 1 ||
    length(object@given) != 1 ||
    length(object@family) != 1 ||
    length(object@email) != 1 ||
    length(object@comment) != 1) {
    invalids <- paste0(
      "@name, @age, @given, @family, @email, ",
      "@comment must be of length 1"
    )
  }

  known_roles <- c(
    NA_character_, "aut", "com", "cph", "cre", "ctb",
    "ctr", "dtc", "fnd", "rev", "ths", "trl"
  )

  if (!all(object@role %in% known_roles)) {
    paste(
      "@role(s) must be one of",
      paste(known_roles, collapse = ", ") # nolint: paste_linter.
    )
  }

  if (length(invalids)) {
    return(invalids)
  }
  TRUE
}) |>
  invisible()

Notes: while I missed including age, our implementations are similar except for validations.


  1. What happens if you define a new S4 class that doesn’t have any slots? (Hint: read about virtual classes in ?setClass.)

Answer: defining a new class with no slots makes it a virtual class, which can’t be used to create new objects, but can be used to define a class union.

setClass("Virtual")
try(new("Virtual"))
#> Error in new("Virtual") : 
#>   trying to generate an object from a virtual class ("Virtual")
setClassUnion("Virtual", "Person")
getClass("Virtual")
#> Extended class definition ( "ClassUnionRepresentation" )
#> Virtual Class "Virtual" [in ".GlobalEnv"]
#> 
#> No Slots, prototype of class "Person"
#> 
#> Known Subclasses: "Person"

AR Solutions: It depends on the other arguments. If we inherit from another class, we get the same slots. But something interesting happens if we don’t inherit from an existing class. We get a virtual class. A virtual class can’t be instantiated:

setClass("Human")
try(new("Human"))
#> Error in new("Human") : 
#>   trying to generate an object from a virtual class ("Human")

But can be inherited from:

setClass("Programmer", contains = "Human")

  1. Imagine you were going to reimplement factors, dates, and data frames in S4. Sketch out the setClass() calls that you would use to define the classes. Think about appropriate slots and prototype.

Answer: sketch below. Default values would be set in initialize().

setClass("Factor",
  slots = list(
    x = "character",
    levels = "character",
    labels = "character",
    exclude = "character",
    ordered = "logical",
    nmax = "integer"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    x = character(0),
    levels = character(0),
    labels = character(0),
    exclude = NA_character_,
    ordered = FALSE,
    nmax = NA_integer_
  )
)

setClass("S4Date",
  slots = list(
    days = "integer"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    days = 0L
  )
)

setClass("DataFrame",
  slots = list(
    data = "matrix",
    col_names = "character",
    row_names = "character"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    data = matrix(nrow = 0, ncol = 0),
    col_names = NULL,
    row_names = NULL
  )
)

AR Solutions: For all these classes we need one slot for the data and one slot per attribute. Keep in mind, that inheritance matters for ordered factors and dates. For data frames, special checks like equal lengths of the underlying list’s elements should be done within a validator.

For simplicity we don’t introduce an explicit subclass for ordered factors. Instead, we introduce ordered as a slot.

setClass("Factor",
  slots = c(
    data = "integer",
    levels = "character",
    ordered = "logical"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    data = integer(),
    levels = character(),
    ordered = FALSE
  )
)
new("Factor", data = c(1L, 2L), levels = letters[1:3])
#> An object of class "Factor"
#> Slot "data":
#> [1] 1 2
#> 
#> Slot "levels":
#> [1] "a" "b" "c"
#> 
#> Slot "ordered":
#> [1] FALSE

The Date2 class stores its dates as integers, similarly to base R which uses doubles. Dates don’t have any other attributes.

setClass("Date2",
  slots = list(
    data = "integer"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    data = integer()
  )
)

new("Date2", data = 1L)
#> An object of class "Date2"
#> Slot "data":
#> [1] 1

Our DataFrame class consists of a list and a slot for row.names. Most of the logic (e.g. checking that all elements of the list are a vector, and that they all have the same length) would need to be part of a validator.

setClass("DataFrame",
  slots = c(
    data = "list",
    row.names = "character"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    data = list(),
    row.names = character(0)
  )
)

new("DataFrame", data = list(a = 1, b = 2))
#> An object of class "DataFrame"
#> Slot "data":
#> $a
#> [1] 1
#> 
#> $b
#> [1] 2
#> 
#> 
#> Slot "row.names":
#> character(0)

Notes:

  • A key insight from AR Solutions is that the objects need one slot for data and one for each attribute
  • My implementation of Factor is wrong, where the AR Solutions answer is clearly right
  • The implementations of the new Date object are similar; the prototype for AR Solutions is better
  • The AR Solutions DataFrame omits column names (names), where mine does not; using a list for the data in DataFrame is a better choice, but harder to implement
attributes(data.frame())
#> $names
#> character(0)
#> 
#> $row.names
#> integer(0)
#> 
#> $class
#> [1] "data.frame"

15.4.5 Exercises

  1. Add age() accessors for the Person class.

Answer: the code below adds age accessors to Advanced R Person.

setClass("Person",
  slots = c(
    name = "character",
    age = "numeric"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    name = NA_character_,
    age = NA_real_
  )
)

john <- new("Person", name = "John Smith")

setGeneric("age", function(x) standardGeneric("age")) |>
  invisible()
setMethod("age", "Person", function(x) x@age)

age(john)
#> [1] NA
setGeneric("age<-", function(x, value) standardGeneric("age<-")) |>
  invisible()
setMethod("age<-", "Person", function(x, value) {
  x@age <- value
  validObject(x)
  x
})

age(john) <- 51
age(john)
#> [1] 51

AR Solutions: We implement the accessors via an age() generic, with a method for the Person class and a corresponding replacement function age<-:

setGeneric("age", function(x) standardGeneric("age"))
#> [1] "age"
setMethod("age", "Person", function(x) x@age)

setGeneric("age<-", function(x, value) standardGeneric("age<-"))
#> [1] "age<-"
setMethod("age<-", "Person", function(x, value) {
  x@age <- value
  validObject(x)
  x
})

  1. In the definition of the generic, why is it necessary to repeat the name of the generic twice?

Answer: according to the R docs, setGeneric(name) specifies an existing function. When creating a new generic, the form setGeneric(name, def) is used, where def is standardGeneric(name).

AR Solutions: Within setGeneric() the name (1st argument) is needed as the name of the generic. Then, the name also explicitly incorporates method dispatch via standardGeneric() within the generic’s body (def parameter of setGeneric()). This behaviour is similar to UseMethod() in S3.


  1. Why does the show() method defined in Section 15.4.3 use is(object)[[1]]? (Hint: try printing the employee subclass.)

Answer: is(object) returns a vector for a subclass, with the current class first.

setClass("Employee",
  contains = "Person",
  slots = c(
    boss = "Person"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    boss = new("Person")
  )
)

setMethod("show", "Person", function(object) {
  cat(is(object)[[1]], "\n",
    "  Name: ", object@name, "\n",
    "  Age:  ", object@age, "\n",
    sep = ""
  )
})

john
#> Person
#>   Name: John Smith
#>   Age:  51
jane <- new("Employee", name = "Jane Doe")
is(jane)
#> [1] "Employee" "Person"
jane
#> Employee
#>   Name: Jane Doe
#>   Age:  NA

AR Solutions: is(object) returns the class of the object. is(object) also contains the superclass, for subclasses like Employee. In order to always return the most specific class (the subclass), show() returns the first element of is(object).


  1. What happens if you define a method with different argument names to the generic?

Answer: this should cause method dispatch to fail, but I don’t know of a way to test.

AR Solutions: It depends. We first create the object hadley of class Person:

.Person <- setClass(
  "Person",
  slots = c(name = "character", age = "numeric")
)
hadley <- .Person(name = "Hadley")
hadley
#> Person
#>   Name: Hadley
#>   Age:

Now let’s see which arguments can be supplied to the show() generic.

formals("show")
#> $object

Usually, we would use this argument when defining a new method.

setMethod("show", "Person", function(object) {
  cat(object@name, "creates hard exercises")
})

hadley
#> Hadley creates hard exercises

When we supply another name as a first element of our method (e.g. x instead of object), this element will be matched to the correct object argument and we receive a warning. Our method will work, though:

setMethod("show", "Person", function(x) {
  cat(x@name, "creates hard exercises")
})
#> Warning: For function 'show', signature 'Person': argument in method definition
#> changed from (x) to (object)
hadley
#> Hadley creates hard exercises

If we add more arguments to our method than our generic can handle, we will get an error.

try(
  setMethod("show", "Person", function(x, y) {
    cat(x@name, "is", x@age, "years old")
  })
)
#> Error in conformMethod(signature, mnames, fnames, f, fdef, definition) : 
#>   in method for 'show' with signature 'object="Person"': formal arguments (object = "Person") omitted in the method definition cannot be in the signature

If we do this with arguments added to the correctly written object argument, we will receive an informative error message. It states that we could add other argument names for generics, which can take the ... argument.

try(
  setMethod("show", "Person", function(object, y) {
    cat(object@name, "is", object@age, "years old")
  })
)
#> Error in rematchDefinition(definition, fdef, mnames, fnames, signature) : 
#>   methods can add arguments to the generic 'show' only if '...' is an argument to the generic

15.5.5 Exercises

  1. Draw the method graph for f(sweat_smile, kissing_cat)

Answer: skipped.

AR Solutions: Look at the graph and repeat after me: “I will keep my class structure simple and use multiple inheritance sparingly”.


  1. Draw the method graph for f(smiley, wink, kissing_smiling_eyes)

Answer: skipped.

AR Solutions: We see that the method graph below looks simpler than the one above. Relatively speaking, multiple dispatch seems to introduce less complexity than multiple inheritance. Use it with care, though!


  1. Take the last example which shows multiple dispatch over two classes that use multiple inheritance. What happens if you define a method for all terminal classes? Why does method dispatch not save us much work here?

Answer: since all terminal nodes are equidistant from the classes, the method is ambiguous. This is true at the first level as well. The only way to avoid ambiguity is to avoid method dispatch altogether and define a method at the root node.

AR Solutions: We will introduce ambiguity, since one class has distance 2 to all terminal nodes and the other four have distance 1 to two terminal nodes each. To resolve this ambiguity we have to define five more methods, one per class combination.


15.6.3 Exercises

  1. What would a full setOldClass() definition look like for an ordered factor (i.e. add slots and prototype the definition above)?

Answer: building on the AR Solutions example and the factor example in 15.6.1, the following S4 object behaves like the ordered() version:

setClass("Ordered",
  contains = "integer",
  slots = c(
    levels = "character",
    ordered = "logical"
  ),
  prototype = structure(
    integer(),
    levels = character(),
    ordered = TRUE
  )
)
setOldClass("ordered", S4Class = "Ordered")

o <- new("Ordered", 1:4, levels = letters[1:4])
o
#> An object of class "Ordered"
#> [1] 1 2 3 4
#> Slot "levels":
#> [1] "a" "b" "c" "d"
#> 
#> Slot "ordered":
#> [1] TRUE
str(ordered(c("a", "b", "c", "d")))
#>  Ord.factor w/ 4 levels "a"<"b"<"c"<"d": 1 2 3 4

AR Solutions: The purpose of setOldClass() lies in registering an S3 class as a “formally defined class”, so that it can be used within the S4 object-oriented programming system. When using it, we may provide the argument S4Class, which will inherit the slots and their default values (prototype) to the registered class.

Let’s build an S4 OrderedFactor on top of the S3 factor in such a way.

setOldClass("factor") # use build-in definition for brevity
OrderedFactor <- setClass(
  "OrderedFactor",
  contains = "factor", # inherit from registered S3 class
  slots = c(
    levels = "character",
    ordered = "logical" # add logical order slot
  ),
  prototype = structure(
    integer(),
    levels = character(),
    ordered = logical() # add default value
  )
)

We can now register the (S3) ordered-class, while providing an “S4 template”. We can also use the S4-class to create new object directly.

setOldClass("ordered", S4Class = "OrderedFactor")
x <- OrderedFactor(
  c(1L, 2L, 2L),
  levels = c("a", "b", "c"),
  ordered = TRUE
)
str(x)
#> Formal class 'OrderedFactor' [package ".GlobalEnv"] with 4 slots
#>   ..@ .Data   : int [1:3] 1 2 2
#>   ..@ levels  : chr [1:3] "a" "b" "c"
#>   ..@ ordered : logi TRUE
#>   ..@ .S3Class: chr "factor"

Notes: while my class Ordered looks similar to the AR Solutions version, it does not include the S3 class:

str(o)
#> Formal class 'Ordered' [package ".GlobalEnv"] with 3 slots
#>   ..@ .Data  : int [1:4] 1 2 3 4
#>   ..@ levels : chr [1:4] "a" "b" "c" "d"
#>   ..@ ordered: logi TRUE

  1. Define a length method for the Person class.

Answer: since Person is a vector class, its length is the length() of any of its fields (we use Person2 here due to prevent conflicts with the already defined Person class):

setClass("Person2",
  slots = c(
    name = "character",
    age = "numeric"
  ),
  prototype = list(
    name = NA_character_,
    age = NA_real_
  )
)

setGeneric("length") |>
  invisible()
setMethod("length", "Person2", function(x) length(x@name))

people <- new("Person2", name = c("John Smith", "Jane Doe"), age = c(NA_real_, NA_real_))
people
#> An object of class "Person2"
#> Slot "name":
#> [1] "John Smith" "Jane Doe"  
#> 
#> Slot "age":
#> [1] NA NA
length(people)
#> [1] 2

AR Solutions: We keep things simple and will just return "180cm" when the length() method is called on a Person object. The method can be defined either as an S3 or S4 method.

length.Person <- function(x) "180cm" # S3
setMethod("length", "Person", function(x) "180cm") # S4

16 Trade-offs

You now know about the three most important OOP toolkits available in R. Now that you understand their basic operation and the principles that underlie them, we can start to compare and contrast the systems in order to understand their strengths and weaknesses. This will help you pick the system that is most likely to solve new problems.

Overall, when picking an OO system, I recommend that you default to S3. S3 is simple, and widely used throughout base R and CRAN. While it’s far from perfect, its idiosyncrasies are well understood and there are known approaches to overcome most shortcomings. If you have an existing background in programming you are likely to lean towards R6, because it will feel familiar. I think you should resist this tendency for two reasons. Firstly, if you use R6 it’s very easy to create a non-idiomatic API that will feel very odd to native R users, and will have surprising pain points because of the reference semantics. Secondly, if you stick to R6, you’ll lose out on learning a new way of thinking about OOP that gives you a new set of tools for solving problems.