| data.class {base} | R Documentation |
Determine the class of an arbitrary R object.
data.class(x)
x |
an R object. |
character string giving the class of x.
The class is the (first element) of the class
attribute if this is non-NULL, or inferred from the object's
dim attribute if this is non-NULL, or mode(x).
Simply speaking, data.class(x) returns what is typically useful
for method dispatching. (Or, what the basic creator functions already
and maybe eventually all will attach as a class attribute.)
For compatibility reasons, there is one exception to the rule above:
When x is integer, the result of
data.class(x) is "numeric" even when x is classed.
x <- LETTERS data.class(factor(x)) # has a class attribute data.class(matrix(x, ncol = 13)) # has a dim attribute data.class(list(x)) # the same as mode(x) data.class(x) # the same as mode(x) stopifnot(data.class(1:2) == "numeric") # compatibility "rule"