> Attributes are slightly harder to work with, so Simon's recommendation is > good advice. But in cases where you want other functions to work with the > result, and the result isn't a named list with a class, then attributes are > a convenient way to go. > > The only two snags I can think of are 1, that R uses a few attributes for > its own purposes (e.g. "names", "dim" and "dimnames") and if you use those > attribute names for something incompatible you'll probably run into all > sorts of problems and 2, that S4 objects use attributes internally. I > wouldn't recommend using attributes on an S4 object.
Attributes are also useful when you're extending a atomic vector, and want to be able to store objects of your new class inside data frames etc. Hadley -- Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair Department of Statistics / Rice University http://had.co.nz/ ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
