From cbeleites at units.it  Mon Dec 22 15:40:12 2008
From: cbeleites at units.it (Claudia Beleites)
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:40:12 +0100
Subject: [Rd] methods vs. functions
Message-ID: <200812221540.12303.cbeleites@units.it>

Dear List,

a second, more general, question concerning S4 classes.

I have a bunch of functions/methods for my class. 

At the moment I have them as methods, because they work on objects of my S4 
class and therefore "belong" to that class.

On the other hand, it is comparably unlikely that someone else wants the same 
kind of method. 
And package.skeleton () produces the xzy-methods.Rds. But for the 
documentation I rather need "normal" function definitions. I know that I can 
write the Rd files just as if it was a normal function, but this got me to ask 
myself whether it is a good idea to have methods or whether I should rather 
use "normal" functions?

If I understood the concept of namespace correctly, a package with a namespace 
avoids trouble with clashing function names - so I don't need to worry about 
that using functions (I anyways have some functions, that should not be 
methods of the class).

Any comments?

Thanks a lot!

Claudia

-- 
Claudia Beleites
Dipartimento dei Materiali e delle Risorse Naturali
Universit? degli Studi di Trieste
Via Alfonso Valerio 6/a
I-34127 Trieste

phone: +39 (0 40) 5 58-34 47
email: cbeleites at units.it



[Rd] methods vs. functions
Claudia Beleites