methods-deprecated {methods}R Documentation

Deprecated Functions in Methods package

Description

These functions are provided for compatibility with older versions of R only, and may be defunct as soon as the next release.

Usage

getAllMethods(f, fdef, where)
mlistMetaName (name, package)
removeMethodsObject(f, where)

Details

The original help page for these functions is often available at help("oldName-deprecated") (note the quotes). Functions in packages other than the methods package are listed in help("pkg-deprecated").

Summary of Functions

getAllMethods:
This function replicates the behavior of getMethods, which should be called instead to obtain approximately the old behavior of getAllMethods. However, a better substitution is to use findMethods, which returns a simpler structure.

(The following is the original description, which has not been accurate since approximately version 2.5.0 of R.)

A generic function (with methods) representing the merge of all the methods defined for this generic starting from environment where, including all parent environments. By default, uses the global environment (and therefore all packages on the search list). This function exists largely to re-compute the full set of methods when a change to the available methods occurs. Since all such recomputations are supposed to be automatic, direct calls to getAllMethods should not be needed.

If the generic f has a group generic, methods for this group generic (and further generations of group generics, if any) are also merged.

The merging rule is as follows: each generic is merged across packages, and the group generics are then merged, finally adding the directly defined methods of f.

The effect of the merging rule is that any method directly defined for f on any included package overrides a method for the same signature defined for the group generic; similarly for the group generic and its group, if any, etc.

For f or for a specific group generic, methods override in the order of the packages being searched. A method for a particular signature on a particular package overrides any methods for the same signature on packages later on in the list of packages being searched.

The slot "allMethods" of the merged methods list is set to a copy of the methods slot; this is the slot where inherited methods are stored.)

mlistMetaName:
Utility to return the mangled name for the object that stored the MethodsList representation of the methods for a particular generic function, typically in the environment of a package.

These objects are no longer used, and will likely not be generated starting in version 2.8.0 of R.

removeMethodsObject:
remove the metadata object containing methods for f.

See Also

Deprecated


[Package methods version 2.7.1 Index]