data.class Object Classes

Description

Determine the class of an arbitrary R object.

Usage

data.class(x)

Arguments

x	an R object.

Value

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.)

Note

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.

See Also

class

Examples

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"