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.
class
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"