NEWS in package ‘R.oo’

---

Changes in version 1.25.0 (2022-06-11)

New Features

• Now showNews() for Package recognizes 'NEWS.md' files too.

Bug Fixes

• Rdoc no longer injects a dummy \emph{} at the end of @howtocite sections, because it now triggers an R CMD check --as-cran NOTE. The workaround was used to workaround an R CMD check false positive way back in 2004, which has since been fixed.

Changes in version 1.24.0 (2020-08-24)

New Features

• Added $<- and [[<- for Object to the list of S3 methods that tries to ignore objects of class Object that are of the kind that R.oo creates. This fixes conflicts with Object objects that the arrow package produces, which are non-R.oo objects. Other S3 Object methods already do this since R.oo 1.20.0 to workaround similar issues with the rJava package.

Bug Fixes

• getDate() for Package returned NA because it was looking for DESCRIPTION field Date, which has been renamed to Date/Publication.

Changes in version 1.23.0 (2019-11-02)

Significant Changes

• Exporting generic throw(), which previously was a re-export of ditto from R.methodsS3. This change prevents the message "Registered S3 method overwritten by 'R.oo': ... throw.default R.methodsS3" from appearing when the R.oo package is loaded (directly or indirectly).

Deprecated and Defunct

• Removed defunct method gc() for Object. Use clearCache(..., gc = TRUE).

CRAN Policy

• Dont test example(getBundle.Package) because they may take more than 5 seconds when run on CRAN where installed.packages() will take a long time due to many thousands of packages.

Changes in version 1.22.0 (2018-04-21)

New Features

• Now generic function clone() is always created. This avoids the recurring issues where the creation of generic R.oo::clone() was skipped if another clone() generic already existed during package installation from source. This would in turn cause for instance the R.utils package to fail during loading (R.utils Issue #29). Thanks to Matt Dowle for reporting on this and insisting on a fix.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Removed previously defunct update() for Package; use update.packages().

• Removed previously defunct registerFinalizer() for Object.

• Previous deprecated gc() for Object is now defunct; use clearCache(..., gc = TRUE) instead.

Bug Fixes

• Method dispatching of [[<- for Object and BasicObject failed when running R CMD check in R-devel (>= 3.6.0) with environment variables _R_S3_METHOD_LOOKUP_BASEENV_AFTER_GLOBALENV and _R_S3_METHOD_LOOKUP_USE_TOPENV_AS_DEFENV both set to TRUE.

Changes in version 1.21.0 (2016-10-30)

New Features

• Now TAB-completion works on elements of Object, BasicObject, and Class.

• Now getElement() works also for Object, Class, and BasicObject.

• [[() for Object, Class and BasicObject gained argument exact, but exact = FALSE is currently ignored and treated as exact = TRUE.

Changes in version 1.20.0 (2016-02-17)

Significant Changes

• Package requires R (>= 2.13.0) (April 2011), because R.methodsS3 effectively requires that version.

New Features

• Some S3 methods for R.oo classes Object and Exception would interfere with ditto for rJava objects that had class attributes containing "Object" and "Exception". Although these classes have the same name, and therefore are in conflict, they represent completely different classes. For methods where conflicts have been identified, the R.oo implementations will try to detect the conflict and call the next method instead.

• Now print() and startupMessage() for Package report on package date only if date exists.

Software Quality

• CLEANUP: Explicit namespace imports also from utils package.

• CLEANUP: Drop unused code.

Bug Fixes

• clazz[[method]]() for Class object clazz did not call the intended static method, as clazz$<method>() would do.

• getClasses() for Package would return NULL.

Changes in version 1.19.0 (2015-02-27)

Software Quality

• Now explicitly declare "default" S3 methods for getClasses() and getMethods().

• Dropped non-ASCII characters from R source comments.

Bug Fixes

• Now charToInt() returns integers as documented (was numerics).

• objectSize() for environment could result in infinite recursive calls if there circular dependencies between environments. Added package test for objectSize() including this case.

• getKnownSubclasses() for Class could throw an error if one of the objects "scanned" for being a function and of class Class would thrown an error from just looking at it. See R-devel thread 'Inspect a "delayed" assigned whose value throws an error?' on 2015-01-26 for details.

• Forgot to explicitly import getClasses() and getMethods() from the methods package. Interestingly, this one has never given an error.

• getStaticInstance() for Object now searches the parent/calling environment as well. This covers the case when constructors and objects are created in a local environment (contrary to package namespaces and the global environment).

Changes in version 1.18.5 (2015-01-05)

Deprecated and Defunct

• Now update() for Package is defunct; use update.packages().

Changes in version 1.18.4 (2014-12-29)

New Features

• Added argument decreasing to ll(), e.g. ll(sortBy = "objectSize", decreasing = TRUE).

Changes in version 1.18.3 (2014-10-18)

Bug Fixes

• Rdoc$compile() and Rdoc tag @allmethods failed to provide links and titles on non-exported S3 methods.

Changes in version 1.18.2 (2014-04-26)

Bug Fixes

• Now Rdoc$getRdUsage() escapes %*% to \%*\% in the Rd output.

Changes in version 1.18.1 (2014-03-30)

Bug Fixes

• Now getRdDeclaration(), getRdHierarchy(), and getRdMethods() for Class handles also non-exported methods and classes.

Changes in version 1.18.0 (2014-02-22)

Significant Changes

• A registered finalizer function for Object:s no longer calls finalize() on the Object itself unless the R.oo package is loaded, whereas previously it would have tried to temporarily reattach the R.oo package. On the other hand, it is now sufficient to have R.oo loaded for finalize() to be called, whereas in the passed it also had to be attached.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Deprecated gc() for Object. Use clearCache(..., gc = TRUE) instead.

Changes in version 1.17.1 (2014-02-05)

Significant Changes

• Argument properties of ll() defaults to an options, which if not set in turn defaults to a given value. The ll() method is no longer trying to set that option if missing. The option is also no longer set when the package is attached.

Changes in version 1.17.0 (2014-01-05)

New Features

• Now Class$forName() searches all loaded namespaces as a last resort.

Changes in version 1.16.2 (2014-01-05)

New Features

• Now static method Class$forName() accepts optional envir argument for specifying from where to search for the Class object.

• Added argument 'gc = FALSE' to clearCache(). It is recommended to start using clearCache(obj, gc = TRUE) instead of gc(obj).

Deprecated and Defunct

• Defunct registerFinalizer() for Object.

Bug Fixes

• The temporary finalizer() registered for Object while loading the R.oo package itself would cause cyclic loading of R.oo. The reason was that it checked whether R.oo was available or not, by only looking at attached namespaces but not loaded ones. This bug was introduced in R.oo 1.16.0.

Changes in version 1.16.1 (2014-01-04)

Software Quality

• Added several missing importFrom() and S3method() statements to the NAMESPACE file.

Changes in version 1.16.0 (2013-10-13)

New Features

• Added argument 'finalize' to Object() to specify whether a finalizer should be registered or not. If so, then generic function finalize() is called on the Object. Furthermore, extend() for Object gained argument ...finalize, which, regardless of argument finalize of Object, force the registration of a finalizer (...finalize = TRUE) or the removal of one (...finalize = FALSE). If ...finalize = NA (default), then the finalizer is enabled/disabled according to argument finalize of Object. For backward compatibility reasons, the default behavior is still to register a finalizer for Object:s, but this may change in a future release.

Software Quality

• Now the package's system tests assume that it's only the base package that is attached.

Bug Fixes

• Now Object finalizers will no longer try to re-attach the R.oo package if library() is in the process of trying to attach another package, because otherwise a cyclic loading of namespaces may occur. This was observed for a package that allocated a temporary Object .onAttach() which then was garbage collected and finalized.

Changes in version 1.15.8 (2013-10-10)

Bug Fixes

• It appears that when loading the package it may happen that the R.oo namespace is loaded cyclicly, though this has only been observed while running R CMD INSTALL. This may be because a Package object (R.oo::R.oo) is assigned during the loading of the namespace. Since Package extends() an Object object, this may end up loading R.oo again. To avoid this, R.oo::R.oo is now assigned using delayed assignment.

Changes in version 1.15.7 (2013-10-08)

Software Quality

• Now using inherits = FALSE in several internal exists()/get() calls.

Changes in version 1.15.6 (2013-10-07)

New Features

• Now Rdoc tag @howToCite does a better job when there are multiple citations in CITATION.

Software Quality

• Now importing getCall() from stats, iff R (>= 2.14.0).

Changes in version 1.15.5 (2013-09-28)

New Features

• Now the R.oo Package object is also available when the package is only loaded (but not attached).

Changes in version 1.15.4 (2013-09-26)

Deprecated and Defunct

• Deprecated update() for Package.

• Deprecated non-used registerFinalizer() for Object.

Changes in version 1.15.3 (2013-09-23)

Software Quality

• Now properly declaring all S3 methods in the NAMESPACE file.

Changes in version 1.15.2 (2013-09-20)

Software Quality

• ROBUSTNESS: Forgot to import R.methodsS3::appendVarArgs().

Bug Fixes

• The finalizer function registered by extend() for Object:s assumed that the utils is attached while calling capture.output(), which under certain conditions could generate 'Error in getObjectInfo(this) : could not find function "capture.output"' while the garbage collector was running. In extreme cases it could also crash R.

Changes in version 1.15.1 (2013-08-29)

New Features

• library("R.oo", warn.conflicts = FALSE, quietly = TRUE) will load the package completely silently.

• Now startupMessage() for Package acknowledges library(..., quietly = TRUE).

• setConstructorS3() no longer requires that R.oo is attached ("loaded").

Changes in version 1.15.0 (2013-08-23)

New Features

• Now getHowToCite() for Package utilizes utils::citation(), if package don't contain a HOWTOCITE file. It is recommended to write packages with CITATION instead of HOWTOCITE.

Documentation

• Hiding non-essential methods from the Rd help index, e.g. charToInt(), intToChar(), hashCode(), equals(), dimension(), and trim().

Software Quality

• Package no longer utilizes :::.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Made get- and showHowToCite() protected methods.

• Dropped deprecated inst/HOWTOSITE replaced by inst/CITATION.

Changes in version 1.14.0 (2013-08-20)

New Features

• Now it's possible to call static methods without attaching ("loading") the package, e.g. R.oo::Class$forName("Object"). Added unit tests for this.

• Now getPackage() for Class first searches the namespace of the Class object and then the attached ("loaded") packages.

• Now $ and $<- for Object locates the static instance of the Class using getStaticInstance() for Object.

• Updated getStaticInstance() for Object to search more locations.

Changes in version 1.13.10 (2013-07-11)

New Features

• Now R.oo::ll() works without attaching the package. This is done by attaching R.oo when called.

• Now it is possible to use static methods of a Class without attaching the package where the Class is defined, e.g. R.utils::Arguments$getIndex(2). To enable this feature, options("R.oo::Class/searchNamespaces"=TRUE) must be set.

Bug Fixes

• ll(private = TRUE) gave an error if the environment contained the special ... argument.

Changes in version 1.13.9 (2013-07-01)

Software Quality

• Bumped up package dependencies.

Changes in version 1.13.8 (2013-06-27)

New Features

• Added a trial version of Rdoc tag @usage.

Changes in version 1.13.7 (2013-05-30)

New Features

• Now Rdoc$compile() infer the package name from the DESCRIPTION file (instead from the package directory name).

• Added argument path to compileRdoc().

Changes in version 1.13.6 (2013-05-25)

Performance

• Minor speedup by replacing all rm(x) with rm(list = "x").

Changes in version 1.13.5 (2013-05-20)

New Features

• Now Rdoc$getUsage() inserts line breaks so that any usage line is at most 90 characters long.

Documentation

• CRAN POLICY: Now all Rd \usage{} lines are at most 90 characters long.

Changes in version 1.13.4 (2013-04-08)

New Features

• Now the @RdocData Rdoc tag also adds an \docType{data} Rd tag.

Changes in version 1.13.3 (2013-04-04)

Bug Fixes

• In R.oo v1.13.1, a bug was introduced causing the value of Rdoc tag @allmethods not to be parsed and instead treated as text.

Changes in version 1.13.2 (2013-04-03)

New Features

• Now Rdoc$compile() outputs the same Rd files regardless of system settings. More precisely, it always uses \n for line breaks and locale "C" (default) for sorting strings.

• Now Rdoc$compile(..., filename) handles when argument filename is a vector of filenames.

Changes in version 1.13.1 (2013-03-25)

New Features

• Now Rdoc$compile(..., check = TRUE) saves the erroneous Rd to file before throwing the exception. This helps troubleshooting.

Bug Fixes

• Rdoc$compile() could sometimes drop } following Rdoc tags.

Changes in version 1.13.0 (2013-03-08)

New Features

• Added support for Rdoc tag @author to have an optional value, e.g. @author "John Doe" as well as @author "JD, FB" where the initials are inferred from the package's DESCRIPTION file.

• Added compileRdoc() to make it easier to compile Rdoc comments into Rd help files, e.g. Rscript -e "R.oo::compileRdoc()".

• Now getAuthor() and getMaintainer() for Package use the Authors@R field of DESCRIPTION and if not found, then the Author/Maintainer fields. In addition, using argument as = "person" will parse and return the results as a person list.

Software Quality

• Added an Authors@R field to the DESCRIPTION.

Changes in version 1.12.0 (2013-03-04)

New Features

• It is now easier to find help for static method, e.g. help("Object$load") and ?"Object$load".

• For "static" methods (e.g. Object$load()), the Rdoc compiler now generates a \usage{} section without the deprecated Rd markup \synopsis{}, which has been replaced by the static call placed in a comment. It also uses the static method as the name and alias (e.g. \name{Object$load}).

Changes in version 1.11.7 (2013-01-08)

Bug Fixes

• ROBUSTNESS: Made the Object finalizers reentrant. This was previously not the case on R prior to R v2.15.2 Patched r61487 iff the garbage collection is triggered from within base::parse() and the R.oo package is not already loaded when the finalizer is called. In such cases, R could crash. Added a package system test for this. Thanks to Duncan Murdoch (R core) for reporting on this and R core for making base::library() reentrant in R (>= 2.15.2 Patched r61487).

Changes in version 1.11.6 (2013-01-08)

New Features

• Added argument format to getInternalAddress() for Object.

Bug Fixes

• The hexadecimal string returned by as.character() for Object would contain the decimal value and not the hexadecimal one.

Changes in version 1.11.5 (2012-12-28)

Software Quality

• Further preparation for supporting R.oo and its derived packages to be imported without attaching ("loading") them.

• Replaced all data.class(obj) with class(obj)[1L].

Bug Fixes

• getMethods() for Class would give an error if no methods were found for the queried Class.

• In the rare case where getStaticInstance() for Class failed to setup a static instance, the temporary state set internally would not be unset.

Changes in version 1.11.4 (2012-12-19)

New Features

• Added startupMessage() for Package.

Changes in version 1.11.3 (2012-12-18)

Software Quality

• R CMD check for R devel no longer gives a NOTE on attach().

Changes in version 1.11.2 (2012-11-29)

Performance

• Made getKnownSubclasses() for Class a bit faster.

Changes in version 1.11.1 (2012-11-28)

Significant Changes

• LIMITATION: Registered finalizer for pure Object:s (i.e. excluding those which are of a subclass of Object) will no longer be called if the R.oo package has been detached. This should be a very unlikely scenario.

Bug Fixes

• extend() for Object dropped existing field modifiers.

Changes in version 1.11.0 (2012-11-23)

New Features

• Now getStaticInstance() for Class sets the environment for the returned Object to that of the Class.

Software Quality

• Preparing for better support for Object/Class in import-only namespaces, i.e. without packages being loaded.

Changes in version 1.10.3 (2012-11-18)

New Features

• Updated the URL returned by RccViolationException$getRccUrl().

Software Quality

• ROBUSTNESS: Now nearly all S3 methods are declared properly in the namespace.

Changes in version 1.10.2 (2012-11-07)

Bug Fixes

• obj$<method>(...) would throw an error iff the Object obj was saved or instantiated by R.oo (< 1.10.0). Code is now backward compatible with this case. Thanks Roger Day at University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and Dan Tenenbaum (BioC core) for reporting on this.

Changes in version 1.10.1 (2012-10-16)

Bug Fixes

• No longer passing ... to NextMethod(), cf. R-devel thread 'Do *not* pass ... to NextMethod()' - it'll do it for you; missing documentation, a bug or just me?' on Oct 16, 2012.

Changes in version 1.10.0 (2012-10-14)

New Features

• GENERALIZATION: Now <Class>$<staticFcn>(...) calls the corresponding generic function <staticFcn>(static, ...), where static is the static object of Class <Class>. This allows for using NextMethod() in static functions. Calls to <Object>$<staticFcn>(...) and <BasicObject>$<staticFcn>(...) were adjusted analogously.

• Now throw() for Exception outputs the error message both above and below the stack trace, which is particularly useful when the stack trace is long.

Bug Fixes

• The stacktrace details collected by Exception dropped the names of the functions.

Changes in version 1.9.10 (2012-09-14)

Bug Fixes

• The Exception constructor could generate warning In if (regexpr("^function \\(", code) != -1) return("") : the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be used occurring in its local fcnName() function. Now code no longer assumes that code is of length 1.

Changes in version 1.9.9 (2012-09-11)

New Features

• Now throw() for Exception aborts (after signalling and outputting the message) by calling stop(). Ideally it should utilize abort(), but the new version of abort() may be "caught" is certain cases.

Software Quality

• ROBUSTNESS/CRAN POLICY: Updated abort() for condition to utilize invokeRestart("abort"). This avoids having to call .Internal(.signalCondition(...)). It also means that the message outputted by abort() no longer starts with a "Error in ...:" line. abort() imitates how stop() works, but without the signalling.

Bug Fixes

• getContribUrl() and getDevelUrl() would give an error if corresponding fields did not exists in the DESCRIPTION file. Now they return NAs just as getUrl().

Changes in version 1.9.8 (2012-06-22)

New Features

• GENERALIZATION: Added newInstance() for BasicObject.

• ROBUSTNESS: Now constructor BasicObject() is guaranteed to return an object with non-duplicated class attribute elements.

Changes in version 1.9.7 (2012-06-20)

Deprecated and Defunct

• Dropped non-used adjusted getClass() generic function, which means that now there is one less function masking the methods package.

Bug Fixes

• throw() for Exception would give an error in R (< 2.14.0), where no generic getCall() exists. Now it works for all versions of R.

Changes in version 1.9.6 (2012-06-11)

Bug Fixes

• Rdoc$getKeywords() now uses system environment variable R_DOC_DIR for locating the internal KEYWORDS.db. Thanks Charles Hogg at NIST for suggesting this.

Changes in version 1.9.5 (2012-04-20)

New Features

• Added argument export to setConstructorS3().

• Now Rdoc$getUsage() searches also the package namespace for the function/method definition. This is done, before looking in the global search path.

Deprecated and Defunct

• setConstructorS3() no longer sets attribute formals. It has been deprecated since April 2003.

Changes in version 1.9.4 (2012-04-05)

Software Quality

• Now package imports and exports getCall() from the stats package so that generic function getCall() is available for Exception:s also when stats is not loaded, e.g. during executing .Rprofile.

Changes in version 1.9.3 (2012-03-18)

New Features

• Now it is possible to set the default value of argument cleanup of getStackTrace() for Exception via an option.

Changes in version 1.9.2 (2012-03-08)

New Features

• Made stack traces of Exception:s more informative and cleaner.

• Now the default throw() of R.methodsS3 is "quietly" overwritten, i.e. there is no longer a warning about it when R.oo is loaded.

• Now package no longer warns about renaming existing functions getMethods() and getClasses() of base to default methods during installation, iff R.methodsS3 (>= 1.2.3).

Changes in version 1.9.1 (2012-03-05)

New Features

• CLEANUP: throw() for error is now just a wrapper for stop(). Previously it had to do what stop() now does for condition objects.

Software Quality

• CRAN POLICY: Replaced all appendVarArgs() for base functions that do .Internal() calls, because they would then appear as local functions of this package and hence not be accepted by CRAN according to their new policies. Instead we now create "default" functions that are wrappers to the corresponding functions in the base package. Extra care has to be taken for functions that have arguments whose values are dependent on the call environment/closure.

• CRAN POLICY: Dropped .Internal() calls in the default ll() method, in getMethods() for Class objects, and in throw() for Exception:s.

Changes in version 1.9.0 (2012-02-23)

Software Quality

• Now the package imports utils instead of depending on it. This means that all packages that depends on R.oo for loading utils for them need to explicitly load it themselves.

• The R.oo package now requires (at least) R v2.4.0 (Oct 2006!)

Changes in version 1.8.3 (2011-11-01)

Software Quality

• CLEANUP/FIX: Dropped package.description() from getDescriptionFile() for Package, which was done for compatibility reasons when it was deprecated in R v1.9.0. It will be dropped completely in R v2.15.0.

Changes in version 1.8.2 (2011-08-25)

Documentation

• Added further clarification to help(setConstructorS3) about the requirement that constructors defined by setConstructorS3() have to be callable without arguments.

Changes in version 1.8.1 (2011-07-10)

Software Quality

• Changed first argument of getCall() to x, because that is what the new getCall() method of stats in R v2.14.0 uses.

Changes in version 1.8.0 (2011-04-03)

New Features

• ROBUSTNESS: Now finalizers for Object:s are registered to be called also when the R session is quit, if the R.oo::Object/finalizeOnExit option is TRUE. If FALSE (default), as before, the finalizers were only executed when Object:s were cleaned up by the garbage collector.

• Turned of the default instantiation timestamp for Object and BasicObject. The main reason is that it makes it very complicated to calculate reproducible checksums. However, for backward compatibility, it is possible to turn on the timestamp by setting option R.oo::Object/instantiationTime. For BasicObject there is option R.oo::BasicObject/instantiationTime.

• Added protected getFieldModifiers() and getFieldModifier().

• Added argument recursive to clearCache() for recursively traversing all elements are clearing the cache of all detected Object:s.

• Now clearCache() also calls clearLookupCache().

• Added protected clearLookupCache() for clearing internal objects stored in the Object and that are used for faster field lookups.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Dropped deprecated getInstanciationTime().

Changes in version 1.7.5 (2011-02-01)

Software Quality

• Now using inherits (not inherit) in all calls to get() and exists().

Changes in version 1.7.4 (2010-09-22)

New Features

• Now Rdoc lines are allowed to start with double (##) or triple (###) comment characters in addition to single (#) ones.

Changes in version 1.7.3 (2010-06-04)

Significant Changes

• Now argument addTimestamp of Rdoc$compile() defaults to FALSE. This way the generate Rd file will remain identical unless there are real Rdoc/code changes. Not adding timestamps is better when working with a version control systems.

Bug Fixes

• If there are no Rd files, then check() of Rdoc would throw the error "object 'res' not found".

Changes in version 1.7.2 (2010-04-13)

Bug Fixes

• Package(pkg) would throw "Error in Package(pkgname) : object 'package' not found", if pkg is installed in multiple libraries.

Changes in version 1.7.1 (2010-03-17)

Bug Fixes

• Loading the package would generate warnings of of several conflicts. Forgot to export .conflicts.OK after adding the namespace.

Changes in version 1.7.0 (2010-03-13)

Software Quality

• Added a NAMESPACE.

Changes in version 1.6.7 (2010-01-21)

Documentation

• Added some more "get started" help to help(R.oo).

Changes in version 1.6.6 (2009-11-19)

New Features

• Added isOlderThan() for Package.

Changes in version 1.6.5 (2009-10-30)

New Features

• ROBUSTIFICATION: Lowered the risk for save() of Object to leave an incomplete file due to say power failures etc. This is done by first writing to a temporary file, which is then renamed. If the temporary file already exists, an exception is thrown.

Changes in version 1.6.4 (2009-10-27)

Software Quality

• Removed a stray print() statement in attachLocally() for Object:s.

Changes in version 1.6.3 (2009-10-26)

New Features

• Added objectSize() for environments.

Bug Fixes

• Rdoc$compile() did not work with R v2.10.0 and newer.

Changes in version 1.6.2 (2009-10-16)

Software Quality

• Some cleanup of Rd files to meet the stricter requirements.

Changes in version 1.6.1 (2009-10-09)

Bug Fixes

• getBundle() of Package gave "Error in getBundle.Package(pkg) : subscript out of bounds" starting with R v2.10.0.

Changes in version 1.6.0 (2009-10-02)

New Features

• Added the Interface class, which is in an alpha version.

Changes in version 1.5.0 (2009-09-09)

Documentation

• Fixed broken/missing Rd links.

Changes in version 1.4.9 (2009-07-07)

New Features

• Added protected method registerFinalizer() for Object.

Changes in version 1.4.8 (2009-05-18)

Documentation

• The titles for intToChar() and charToInt() where mixed up. Thanks to Jens Philip Hoehmann for reporting this.

Changes in version 1.4.7 (2009-01-10)

Documentation

• There were some Rd warnings with the new R v2.9.0.

Changes in version 1.4.6 (2008-08-11)

New Features

• Added support for more "short tags" in the Rdoc compiler.

Software Quality

• Replaced all a %in% b with is.element(a,b) due to an old and weird bug that I cannot reproduce, cf. my R-devel post in thread 'Argument "nomatch" matched by multiple actual arguments ... %in% -> match?!?' on March 6, 2008. Thanks Ran Pang for reminding me and for additional troubleshooting.

Changes in version 1.4.5 (2008-05-28)

New Features

• SPELL CORRECTION: Added getInstantiationTime(), but keeping misspelled (and now deprecated) getInstanciationTime() for backward compatibility. The internal attribute was also renamed, but the above method look for both in case saved objects are loaded.

Changes in version 1.4.4 (2008-05-08)

New Features

• Added getNews() and showNews() to the Package class. NEWS files are now detected (first).

• Added getConstructorS3().

• The NEWS file does now replace the former HISTORY file of R.oo.

• If running R v2.7.0 or new, the first element of vector ASCII is an empty string. This is because ASCII 0x00 cannot be represented as an R string and in R v2.8.0 it will give a warning. Note though that regardless of this, charToInt(intToChar(0)) == 0 is still TRUE.

Changes in version 1.4.3 (2008-03-25)

New Features

• Added getName() for environment:s.

Bug Fixes

• getInternalAddress() would return NA.

Changes in version 1.4.2 (2008-03-06)

New Features

• Added paper to citation("R.oo").

Bug Fixes

• Regular expression pattern a-Z is illegal on (at least) some locale, e.g. 'C' (where A-z works). The only way to specify the ASCII alphabet is to list all characters explicitly, which we now do in all methods of the package. See the r-devel thread "invalid regular expression '[a-Z]'" on 2008-03-05 for details.

Changes in version 1.4.1 (2008-01-10)

Bug Fixes

• Made the registered finalizer calling finalize() more error prone.

Changes in version 1.4.0 (2007-09-17)

Significant Changes

• Extracted setMethodS3() and related methods from R.oo and put them in a standalone R.methodsS3 package. While doing this, the enforceRCC argument used by setMethodS3() was renamed to validators which now takes an optional list of functions. Any code using argument enforceRCC = FALSE must now use validators = NULL.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Removed code that patched R v1.8.0 and before.

Changes in version 1.3.0 (2007-08-29)

New Features

• Now the startup message when loading the package is generated with packageStartupMessage() so that it can be suppressed.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Removed showAndWait() for simpleError, which displayed a TclTk dialog for a generic error. Never used. If someone wants the code, please tell me and I'll forward it.

• Removed deprecated trycatch(); use tryCatch() instead.

• Removed patched for R v1.8.x and before: stop(), try().

Bug Fixes

• If Object:s are garbage collected after R.oo has been detached, the error 'Error in function (env) : could not find function "finalize"' would be thrown, because the registered finalizer hook tries to call the generic function finalize() in R.oo. We solve this by trying to reload R.oo (and the unload it again). Special care was taken so that Object:s allocated by R.oo itself won't cause an endless loop.

Changes in version 1.2.8 (2007-06-09)

Software Quality

• Removed (incorrect) argument name list from all substitute() calls.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Removed already deprecated getData() because there might be a name clash with the nlme package.

Bug Fixes

• Queried non-existing object error instead of ex in the exception handling of update() of the Package class.

Changes in version 1.2.7 (2007-04-07)

Significant Changes

• Removed support for R v2.0.0 and before.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Removed reportBug() since it was never completed.

Changes in version 1.2.6 (2007-03-24)

New Features

• Now ll() uses objectSize() instead of object.size(). It also returns the properties in its "minimal" data type, e.g. the objectSize column contains integers (not characters as before). This makes it possible to utilize subset() on the ll() output.

• Added a default method for objectSize(), which is just a wrapper for object.size().

Deprecated and Defunct

• Made trycatch() defunct, i.e. it gives an error suggesting to use tryCatch() instead.

Changes in version 1.2.5 (2007-01-05)

Bug Fixes

• getMethods(..., private = FALSE) for class Class would return private methods, and private = TRUE would remove them. It should be the other way around.

• getMethods() for Class would sometimes give error message: "Error in result[[k]] : subscript out of bounds". This in turn would cause Rdoc to fail.

Changes in version 1.2.4 (2006-10-03)

Bug Fixes

• Since getInternalAddress() coerced the address to an integer, addresses about 2^32 bytes = 4 GiB got address NA. Now getInternalAddress() and the default hashCode() return a double.

Changes in version 1.2.3 (2006-09-07)

Software Quality

• Added package utils as a package this one depends on. This is required for package without a namespace in the upcoming R v2.4.0 release.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Removed deprecated method getClass() for class Object but also BasicObject. These were deprecated on 2002-12-15.

Changes in version 1.2.2 (2006-08-11)

New Features

• Added support for give modifiers to fields in classes extending the Object class. Currently it is only the "cached" modifier that is recognized. To specify that a field, say, foo is "cached", list it as cached:foo. Fields that are "cached" will be assigned to NULL when clearCache() of the object is called. For convenience there is also a gc() method for all Object:s. See ?gc.Object for an example.

Software Quality

• Made the package smaller by removing the DSC-2003 logo from the R.oo paper, which shrunk from 324 KiB to 220 KiB. The rest of the files in the source distribution is about 80 KiB when gzipped, i.e. still the paper is three times larger than the rest of the package.

Changes in version 1.2.0 (2006-07-14)

Bug Fixes

• update(R.oo) would throw an error and the package was detached.

Changes in version 1.1.9 (2006-06-14)

New Features

• Added method getEnvironment() to class Object, which will return the environment where the Object's members are stored.

• Now ll() does not assign variables in the lookup environment, which means it will work with sealed environments too.

Changes in version 1.1.8 (2006-05-30)

New Features

• Added isBeingCreated() to Class in order to check if the constructor was called to create the static instance or just any instance.

• Now the Rdoc tag @allmethods takes an optional argument specifying if private, protected or public methods should be listed.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Removed setClassS3(), which has been deprecated since 2003(!).

Changes in version 1.1.7 (2006-05-22)

New Features

• Added argument addTimestamp = TRUE to Rdoc$compile(). This makes it possible to turn of the timestamp, because timestamps makes diff, say the one in Subversion, think there is a real different.

Bug Fixes

• Rdoc$compile() did not write the name of the source file in the header (anymore).

• The code for automatic formatting of replacement methods generated an error.

Changes in version 1.1.6 (2006-04-03)

• This version was commited to CRAN.

New Features

• Now the Rdoc compiler recognizes replacement functions and creates the correct Rd \usage{} format for these.

Changes in version 1.1.5 (2006-03-28)

New Features

• Now argument properties of ll() is given by the option R.oo::ll/properties. If not set when the package is loaded, it is set to a default value. See help(ll) for more details. This was suggested by Tim Beissbarth, German Cancer Research Center.

Bug Fixes

• showHistory() for the Package class was calling itself.

• Compiling Rdoc comments with invalid keyword tags would generate an internal error. Same for invalid visibility tags etc.

Changes in version 1.1.4 (2006-02-18)

New Features

• Now the Rdoc compiler also escapes Rd filenames for @see and @seemethod tags.

Changes in version 1.1.3 (2006-02-09)

New Features

• Added getChangeLog() and showChangeLog() to the Package class. The get- and showHistory(), which are to be made deprecated in the future, are now wrappers for these two methods.

• Added Rdoc tag @RdocPackage to generate <pkg>-package.Rd files.

• Now the Rdoc compiler makes sure that the generated Rd files all starts with a letter or a digit. If not, it adds a default prefix (currently 000). If not, the new R v2.3.0 R CMD check may complaint about missing objects.

Software Quality

• Removed all usage of NULL environments since they are now deprecated in R v2.3.0.

• Now ... is added explicitly to setMethodS3() in all Rd examples.

Changes in version 1.1.2 (2006-01-06)

New Features

• Added Rd links to classes listed under "Directly known subclasses:".

Changes in version 1.1.1 (2005-11-23)

New Features

• Added validation of arguments in replacement functions.

• Added RCC validation of arguments in "picky" methods, e.g. $().

Bug Fixes

• The $<- function goes through alternatives where to save the new value, e.g. set<Name>(), <name> field, static <name> field etc. When a "match" found and the value was assigned, it did not return (except for the set<Name>() match), but instead continued search for the rest. One effect of this was that the new value was always assign to the static field too. The fix make the code run faster too. Thanks Edouard Duchesnay at Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, France for spotting this.

Changes in version 1.1.0 (2005-07-18)

New Features

• Added argument replaceNewline to getDescription() of Package.

• Now as.character() of Package reports the title, the license, and the description, but no longer if the package is part of a bundle. The latter was too slow since it had to scan all installed packages.

• Now print() of Class passes ... to getDetails(), that is, now print(Class, private = TRUE) will work too.

• Added attachLocally() to the Object class.

• Added extend.default(), which can be used to extend any type of object.

• Now pure Object:s are also finalized. Before only subclasses defined via extend(<Object>, "<SubClass>", ...) was finalized. This was not a big deal, because the finalize():er of the Object class is empty anyway.

Documentation

• Added a section on "Defining static fields" to the help page of Object.

Bug Fixes

• Rdoc$compile() sometimes generated the error invalid regular expression '\name{[^\}]*}' (forgot to escape { and }). Fixed. Thanks Lorenz Wernisch, School of Crystallography, University of London for reporting this.

• getDetails() in Class would list private and protected methods as public.

• Argument enforceRCC of setMethodS3() was not passed to setGenericS3().

Changes in version 1.0.5 (2005-06-03)

New Features

• Now the static load() method in Object asserts that the loaded Object inherits from the class that the static object, which is used to call load(), is of. Thus, Object$load(...) will load all Object:s, whereas MyClass$load(...) will only load objects inheriting from MyClass.

• Now an @RdocMethod tag will not add keyword "internal" if the class starts with a lower case, e.g. matrix.

• A @keyword foo can now be removed with @keyword -foo. Order is irrelevant, since @keyword:s are added at the very end.

Changes in version 1.0.4 (2005-05-02)

New Features

• Added getDevelUrl() to the Package class.

Changes in version 1.0.3 (2005-02-28)

New Features

• Argument appendVarArgs of setMethodS3() is now ignored if a replacement function (named nnn<-) is defined.

Changes in version 1.0.2 (2005-02-25)

Bug Fixes

• setMethodS3(..., abstract = TRUE) generated warnings of type using .GlobalEnv instead of package:<pkg>. Found a way (ad hoc?) to get rid of them. See source code for details. This should remove similar warnings from packages loading R.oo.

Changes in version 1.0.1 (2005-02-20)

New Features

• Package now outputs "See ?R.oo for help" when loaded.

• setMethodS3(..., abstract = TRUE) now defines abstract methods with ... as the only argument(s).

Software Quality

• Now using three-digit version numbers, e.g. a.b.c where a,b,c in 0,1,...,9. 'a' is updated for major updates, 'b' for minor updates and 'c' is for minor revisions.

• Removed require(methods) for R v2.0.0 and above.

Changes in version 1.00 (2005-02-15)

Significant Changes

• Moved to CRAN.

Changes in version 0.70 (2005-02-15)

New Features

• Added appendVarArgs = TRUE to setMethodS3(), which specifies that ... should be added, if missing.

• Add argument ... to all methods to make it even more consistent with any generic function. This is also done for a few methods in the R base packages.

Software Quality

• Package now passes R CMD check on R v2.1.0 devel without warnings.

Changes in version 0.69 (2005-02-11)

New Features

• Renamed get- & showDescription() to get- & showDescriptionFile() and added getDescription() to get the Description field of DESCRIPTION.

Documentation

• Added an example to setMethodS3() that is not using Object().

Software Quality

• Package now passes R CMD check on R v2.1.0 devel also. Had to modify a few lines of code to meet the new stricter regular expression patterns.

Deprecated and Defunct

• Moving away from trycatch() in favor of tryCatch(). trycatch() remains for a while, but will be made deprecated in future version and later probably defunct.

Changes in version 0.68 (2005-02-09)

New Features

• By default, now Rdoc$compile() runs Rdoc$check() at the end.

• Rdoc: Added a first simple test for undefined top-level tags in the generated Rd code. Utilizes tools::Rd_parse(), which might be renamed etc. according to its help page.

• Tag-variables such as @author now search for value in options() too.

Changes in version 0.67 (2004-10-23)

Bug Fixes

• getRdMethods() in Class returned empty \tabular{rll}{} if no methods exist, but this gives an error in R CMD Rdconv.

Changes in version 0.66 (2004-10-21)

New Features

• When using setMethodS3(..., abstract = TRUE) in a package that uses lazy loading, which all new packages do by default, warnings like "using .GlobalEnv instead of package:utils" will be generated the first time the abstract method is accessed. This is because eval() is used to create the abstract method; we are looking for a way that will not generate these warnings, although they are not serious. Example: library(R.colors); print(getColorSpace.Color).

• Added getEnvironment() to the Package class.

Documentation

• Added help to more methods.

Software Quality

• Made the package compatible with R v2.0.0 too. Had to move example file 'Exception.R' from data/ to inst/misc/ and update the help example for Rdoc. Update the example of unload() for the Package class to load the boot package instead of obsolete ts.

Bug Fixes

• Rdoc tags was not be parsed by the Rdoc compiler for deprecated methods.

Changes in version 0.65 (2004-06-27)

New Features

• Substantially improved the loading of all my packages. The Package() constructor, which was called when a new package was loaded, was slow unnecessarily slow because of an internal call to installed.packages().

• Added known generic function as.vector().

Documentation

• Added documentation to many methods.

Bug Fixes

• getInternalAddress() for class Object was "too" hard coded making it not work correctly on for instance Suse Linux. Assumed fixed positions of the hexadecimal address of the environment. Now a gsub() with a backreference is used. Should be more safe.

Changes in version 0.64 (2004-04-21)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed deprecated warning about package.description() that occured R v1.9.0 such that the code still works for older versions of R. This was needed for the Package class.

Changes in version 0.63 (2004-03-03)

New Features

• Updated trycatch() (and the Exception class) to work with R v1.8.1. If running R v1.8.1, then tryCatch() is used internally. For R v1.7.1 and before the old trycatch() is used, which will be made deprecated later on. Added a throw() for the error class too for rethrowing errors.

• Update the Rdoc compiler to generate correct \name and \alias Rd tags.

Deprecated and Defunct

• To anyone using setClassS3(), please use setConstructorS3() instead; setClassS3() is deprecated and will be phased out soon!

Bug Fixes

• Package class - from R v1.8.1 we noted that R CMD check made installed.packages() return multiple matches of the same package. This might have been a problem before too, but R CMD check never complained.

Changes in version 0.62 (2003-12-31)

New Features

• Added showDescription(), getHistory(), showHistory(), getHowToCite(), and showHowToCite() to the Package class.

Documentation

• Added an "about" section in the documentation.

Bug Fixes

• For some Rdoc types the \keyword{} statement was placed on the same line as the previous Rd statement. This sometimes generated cluttered Rd index files.

Changes in version 0.61 (2003-12-16)

New Features

• Package: update() does now also reload the updated package by default.

• Exception: Now the throw() method includes the complete stacktrace too when generating a error signal. In other words, the user will automatically see the stacktrace of the error if the error is not caught. Same for stop().

• Rdoc: Added the tag @RdocDocumentation for general documentation.

Changes in version 0.60 (2003-10-28)

New Features

• Added argument compress = TRUE to Object's save() to make it more explicit that compression is supported too. Compression is supported by all R systems since R v1.5.0. See ?capabilities.

• Now Rdoc tries to create the 'man/' (destPath) directory if missing.

Bug Fixes

• $<-.Class was incorrectly returning the static object instead of itself.

• The way $.Object, $<-.Object, $.Class and $<-.Class were checking if an attribute exists was not done correctly. Now they get the list of names of the attributes and compares to that.

• If Object's save() was called with a connection it would still interpret it as a filename.

Changes in version 0.59 (2003-09-19)

New Features

• The Rdoc compile does no long list deprecated methods by default.

Bug Fixes

• getMethods() was not sensitive to deprecated = TRUE.

Changes in version 0.58 (2003-09-03)

Bug Fixes

• dimension() would not always be found if ll() was called on another package, e.g. ll(envir = "methods").

Changes in version 0.57 (2003-07-18)

New Features

• Added Rdoc comments saying that the constructor function must be able to be called without any arguments! Thanks Nathan Whitehouse at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston for making me aware of the missing documentation.

• Rdoc$compile() generated an InternalException when a class was not found saying "Not a class". Now it throws an RdocException and is more specific saying that the class does not exists. Updated the Rdoc comments saying pointing out that the classes and methods have to be loaded before calling Rdoc$compile(). Again, thanks Nathan.

Changes in version 0.56 (2003-07-07)

Bug Fixes

• Forgot to escape % in \usage{} in Rdoc, which lead to unbalanced curly brackets when R CMD check ran.

Changes in version 0.55 (2003-05-14)

Software Quality

• Slight improvement in the internal generation of get<Name> and set<Name>, which is done by using substr()<-.

Changes in version 0.54 (2003-05-03)

Bug Fixes

• Now the Rdoc compiler generates the correct \synopsis and \usage pairs. Before they were added either or, but that was a mistake by me. \synopsis should be added whenever the the \usage statement is not complete.

• update() of Package did not work. Did by mistake add a package argument to update.packages() too. That argument is only used in install.packages() though.

New Features

• Added argument force = FALSE to update() in the Package class.

Changes in version 0.53 (2003-04-28)

New Features

• R.oo: The Rdoc compiler was further improved and made more flexible. I am aiming to make it possible for the user to define their own simple tags.

• All Rd files are now making use of \link[pkg:name]{label} for refering to methods not named according to the label. This is for instance the case with all class specific methods. More over, all Rd files for classes has \keyword{classes} and the \usage{} is used where it works and otherwise \synopsis{} is used (as recommended on the R help pages). All this is automatically taken care of by the Rdoc compiler.

Changes in version 0.52 (2003-04-23)

New Features

• Added getDocPath(), update(), and unload() to the Package class. With update() it is now possible to update a package or its bundle by just typing update(R.oo).

• Added showAndAsk() to the Exception. It will, if tcltk is installed, display a dialog box with the error message. If tcltk is not installed, the message will be printed on the command line and a prompt requesting the user to press enter will be shown. showAndAsk() will give an error if run in a non-interactive mode.

Documentation

• Added almost all missing help pages, i.e. I wrote up a lot of Rd files. More help is still though for the Rdoc class, which compiles Rdoc comments in the source files into Rd files. However, if you want to use Rdoc$compile() already now, see the source files for plenty of examples and just run Rdoc$compile() in the same directory.

• Spell correction: "c.f." -> "cf."

Bug Fixes

• getStaticInstance() of class Class did not recover correctly if static instance was missing.

Changes in version 0.51 (2003-01-17)

New Features

• Added getUrl(), getMaintainer(), getAuthor(), getTitle(), getLicense(), and getBundle(). Made the output from as.character() more informative.

• Added a caching feature of $() to speed up access to members. The first time a member (field, virtual field, static field, method etc) is accessed it is done by looking it up one at the time and taking the first existing one (in a predefined order). The second time the same field is accessed, the name is remembered and $() access the right member directly. If this works out, $<-() will get a similar cache.

Changes in version 0.50 (2002-12-20)

New Features

• Updated try(), which a slight modification to the base::try() for improved exception handling, to have its own internal restart() function (just like base::try()), because restart() has been made deprecated from R v1.6.0. This is how the try() in the base package does it.

Changes in version 0.49 (2002-12-15)

New Features

• Added the finalizer method finalize(), which any subclass can override and that will be called by the garbage collector just before an object is about to be removed from the memory.

• Added default function for equals().

• Added argument overwrite = TRUE and conflict = c("error", "warning", "quiet") to setMethodS3().

• Now extend() in class Object removes duplicated class attributes.

• Now it is possible to create methods (also generic) with one (or several) . (period) as a prefix of the name. Such a method should be considered private in the same manner as fields with a period are private.

• Added argument path = NULL to save() and load() in class Object. It will remove the need using paste() etc.

• For ll(), replaced "getClass" with "data.class" in the properties argument. Since data.class is almost the same as mode, mode was also removed.

• SPELL CHECK: "...name name..." in one of setGenericS3()'s error messages. Thanks Gordon Smyth, WEHI, Melbourne, for the comment.

Deprecated and Defunct

• COMPATIBILITY FIX: Removed default getClass(), because it was not would not work with the methods package.

• Removed deprecated and obsolete is.interface().

Bug Fixes

• The Rdoc class listed too many methods in the "Methods inherited" section.

Changes in version 0.48 (2002-11-23)

Significant Changes

• Renamed setClassS3() to setConstructorS3(), since this is what it is actually doing. Keeping setClassS3() for backward compatibility but made it deprecated.

New Features

• Updated setGenericS3() to always create generic functions with no arguments except ... to follow the RCC.

• Now $() and $<-() in class Object and Class also gets and sets attribute values too, respectively.

• Added getInstanciationTime(), which returns the time point when the object was created.

• Updated getField() of class Class to call generic method getField() and not getField.Object().

Bug Fixes

• $<-() of class Class did not work for static fields.

• getDetails() would not add a newline after the class name if the class did not have a superclass, i.e. for root class Object.

Changes in version 0.47 (2002-10-23)

Significant Changes

• Package named Rx.oo as long as it is a beta package.

New Features

• Decided to declare all Rd files for class methods as \keyword{internal} which means that they will not show up in the HTML table of contents. Only classes and stand-alone functions should be there.

• The package now contains the public classes Object, Exception, RccViolationException. It also contains the internal classes Class, Package, and Rdoc. The class Class is essential, but Package and Rdoc are just utility classes containing useful static methods for development purposes etc.

• The idea behind the Rx.oo package are the same as behind "old" R.oo, but internally environments are used for emulating references, whereas in R.oo a global so called object space was used. However, API-wise not much have been changed.

• FYI: R.oo was first published in March 2001 and has undergone several updates, tests and bug fixes. Experience from that project has been brought into this package.

Changes in version 0.46 (2002-10-14)

New Features

• Added trial versions of extend() of class Object and class Reference. Also added trial version of superMethodS3() to replace faulty NextMethod().

• Added as.Reference() to class Object and class Reference and made the constructor accept Reference objects by just returning them again. Before an exception was thrown.

• Added argument showDeprecated = FALSE to classinfo() in class Class. This has the effected that when typing a name of a class and pressing enter at the prompt to display class information, deprecated method are not shown by default.

• Added the class Class for dealing with static methods, static fields, accessing methods and fields of classes, generating class information etc. Since the handling of static methods and fields are now dealt by a specific class it means that the access of non-static methods and fields, which is done by the Object class, should now be a bit faster due to less overhead.

Changes in version 0.45 (2002-09-23)

Software Quality

• Internal updates: Made .ObjectSpace.count an internal variable of the .ObjectSpace environment, meaning that it is harder to delete it by mistake.

• Added internal function getPackagePosition().

Bug Fixes

• relibrary(R.oo) was reloading the .RObjectSpace file too, which is not a wanted feature.

• setGenericS3() would sometimes believe that a non-function object actually was a function and tried to set it as a generic function, which resulted in an error exception.

• createClassS3() would throw an error exception if there where two packages loaded such the name of the first one was the same as the beginning of the name of the second one, e.g. R.oo and *R.oo2.

Changes in version 0.44 (2002-09-12)

New Features

• Added the functions Q() and Quit() for quiting with the option to save the ObjectSpace also.

• Added isGenericS3() and isGenericS4().

• If trying to use delete() to remove a non-existing variable or Object now only a warning is given, before an exception was thrown which was quite annoying. delete() works as rm() plus it also deletes objects in ObjectSpace, which means that all calls to rm() can be replaced by calls to delete().

• Added the static methods ObjectSpace$save() and ObjectSpace$load() to save and load an image of the ObjectSpace.

Software Quality

• Package passes the R CMD check with 5 warnings.

Bug Fixes

• [[ in class Reference did not work for numeric indices, e.g. ref[[5]]. Strange that I haven't noticed this before.

Changes in version 0.43 (2002-07-09)

New Features

• Now $ and [[ also searches for fields in attributes(). This is a first step towards making use of structure() and friends instead. I've been thinking about this from the very beginning, but newer done it. The plan is to move away from the internal list() and accept any R object as the core object. This will also be more consistent with the R.methods/S4 strategy.

Changes in version 0.42 (2002-05-31)

Software Quality

• Removed forgotten debug messages in setGenericS3().

Changes in version 0.41 (2002-05-26)

New Features

• Moved about() from R.base to this package and removed old description().

• Now the package reports its name, version and date if it was succesfully loaded.

• Minimized the number of warnings when loading packages.

• Added argument dontWarn to setGenericS3(), which by default is set so no warnings are produced for renamed methods in the base package.

• Copied packagePaths() from package R.base to package R.oo, since it is required in R.oo and we do not want R.oo to depend on R.base.

Software Quality

• Package now passes the R CMD check with 5 warnings.

Changes in version 0.40 (2002-05-05)

New Features

• The classes Throwable and Exception have been transfered to here from the R.lang package. With the trycatch() they are really useful.

• throw() and trycatch() are now available in both R.base and R.oo.

• Added createClassS3() and internal variable .NewClassesNotCreated.

• $.Object() and $.Reference() now returns NULL if a field/method etc is not found! Before it an error was thrown.

Bug Fixes

• trycatch() didn't work methods created by setMethodS3(). This was due to I did (internally):

  `object <- try(eval(substitute(object, envir=envir)))`
  

  instead of:

  `object <- try(eval(substitute(object), envir=envir))`
  

  Hmm, a tricky typo to find since it worked elsewhere.

• Tiny bug fix in message of throw() clause in $().

Changes in version 0.39 (2002-04-21)

New Features

• Added a trial version of [.Reference. Currently, it does not support the get<Field name>() idea as described below. Maybe a [<-.Reference will be added later.

• Added trial version of a new feature for Object/Reference fields. Now, if a field does not exists and there is no method with the same name, then, if a method named get<Field name>() exists, the value of get<Field name>(<object>) is returned. This way one can have fields that are generated "on the fly" to save memory etc. This new feature required that [[.Object was modified (actually created). Example: For an object obj one can get its class by either the classical getClass(obj) or by the new feature obj$Class. If this new feature are successful, I will also look at implementing a corresponding set<field name>() support.

Bug Fixes

• setGenericS3() gave an error if one tried to set a generic function with the same name as an R object that was not a function. A simple add of argument mode = "function" to the exists() check fixed this.

Changes in version 0.38 (2002-04-02)

Bug Fixes

• clone() in class Reference did not work properly; it gave the wrong internal reference names, which in turn would generate errors such as 'Error in get(x, envir, mode, inherits) : variable "Reference.METHODS" was not found' when one tried object$foo() instead of foo(object). Now it works again.

Changes in version 0.37 (2002-03-30)

New Features

• IMPROVEMENT: Since library(methods) might be loaded after library(R.oo) the function extends() breaks down. Worked this out a little bit by detaching and reloading R.oo in function createClass() if it is detected that extends() has changed.

• IMPROVEMENT: Forces extends <- function(...) UseMethod("extends"). The reason for doing this is that if we have anything but ... that argument might be matched by an attribute. Not good!

Changes in version 0.36 (2002-03-06)

New Features

• Added names() to the class Reference.

Bug Fixes

• When running the OO garbage collector, calling a finalize() that used the method super() failed with an exception. Internally, the class attributes of the freeable references were lost.

• extends() and implements() in Rdoc sometime gave errors.

Changes in version 0.35 (2002-03-03)

New Features

• Added the methods attach() and detach() which works both on Object's and Reference's.

Changes in version 0.34 (2002-02-27)

New Features

• Renamed the (still) internal class .Reference to Reference.

• Added the setInterfaceS3() method. Makes it easier to define interfaces.

• Static method buildClass() in class Rdoc now also creates a list of methods and saves the result in the file <class>.methods.Rdoc, which can be included in the Rdoc comments by @include "<class>.methods.Rdoc". Hopefully, this will mean that the list of methods in the help files will be more up to date.

Documentation

• Update the examples in the help files to make use of the new setClassS3(), setInterfaceS3(), and setMethodS3().

Deprecated and Defunct

• Declared more internal methods as "private".

Bug Fixes

• Internal scanForMethods() did not make a difference of functions and non-functions, since it basically only looked at the name. For instance would CONST.Foo <- 256 be considered a method in previous versions. This was not a big deal, but it is correct now.

Changes in version 0.33 (2002-02-26)

Bug Fixes

• buildClass() in class Rdoc did not work due to the new package methods. Corrected with one line of code.

Changes in version 0.32 (2002-01-29)

New Features

• Added the arguments trial, deprecated, static, protection, and abstract to setMethodS3() (and to some extend also to setClassS3()).

Software Quality

• Started to make more use of setClassS3() and setMethodS3() internally.

Changes in version 0.31 (2002-01-21)

New Features

• Added createGeneric() to make life easier for class developers.

Changes in version 0.30 (2002-01-18)

New Features

• Added the (optional) argument path = NULL to loadObject().

Changes in version 0.29 (2002-01-13)

New Features

• When obj$foo is evaluated first the field foo is searched for and secondly the class method foo() is searched for. Previously, methods had higher priority than fields.

Bug Fixes

• Bug fix in gco(). R v1.4.0 made it crash.

Changes in version 0.28 (2002-01-09)

New Features

• Made R.oo compatible with new R v1.4.0 and the new package methods.

Changes in version 0.27 (2002-01-02)

New Features

• Internally renamed the methods, e.g. new(), getClass(), and extends(), that conflicted with methods defined in the new R package methods. Hopefully, these changes makes methods run when R.classes is loaded.

• Starting to seperate Object methods and .Reference methods. Eventually maybe R.oo Object's could work very similar to methods object where .Reference is just an add-on to make the Object's referensable.

Changes in version 0.26 (2001-12-29)

New Features

• First steps to make R.classes work together with the new methods package. These fixes made R.classes work when methods was loaded, but methods didn't work when R.classes was loaded.

• This version was never released to the public.

Changes in version 0.25 (2001-08-09)

New Features

• Added super(), which provides a simple way to access methods in the super class.

Changes in version 0.24 (2001-08-07)

New Features

• Added support for this[[field]] and this[[field]] <- value when this is a reference. Another step away from get- and putObject().

• Introduced the modifers() function instead of old attr(...).

Documentation

• Updated many of the out-of-date examples in the help pages.

Performance

• Improved the speed of the garbage collector and it can now also run until no more objects are deleted.

Changes in version 0.23 (2001-08-04)

Performance

• Major break-through in memory and speed efficiency. A lot of expressions are now evaluated directly in the object space environment, which means that no copying between the object space and the current environment is needed. This improvement makes the need for getObject() and setObject() much less of interest and they will probably be made obsolete or private, which is another step towards a more user friendly oo core.

Changes in version 0.22 (2001-08-03)

New Features

• Improved the error and warning messages for false references.

• delete() can now remove any number of any kind of objects, i.e. it is now more consistent to rm().

• Created this HISTORY file. Everything below is recreated from from this date and is therefore not complete.

Changes in version 0.21 (2001-07-29)

• ...

Changes in version 0.20 (2001-07-27)

• ...

Changes in version 0.19 (2001-07-06)

Significant Changes

• Renamed the package to R.oo (from com.braju.oo).

Changes in version 0.15 (2001-05-06)

• ...

Changes in version 0.14 (2001-04-30)

Bug Fixes

• Bug fixes in garbage collection algorithm.

Changes in version 0.13 (2001-04-15)

New Features

• Now it is possible to add new fields to an object. Even though this is not true oo-style, it certainly is helpful. Also, fields (not methods) can be assign new values using regular style foo$value <- bar, where foo is either the object itself or more common the reference to the object.

Changes in version 0.12 (2001-04-13)

Significant Changes

• Now objects "physically" contains only the fields. The methods are looked up in an internal static class. Also, by writing the name of a class, information about the class is listed.

Changes in version 0.11 (2001-04-11)

• ...

Changes in version 0.10 (2001-04-04)

New Features

• Support for static classes. Static methods in static classes can be called by Foo$myStaticMethod(). For class developers: a static class is created by new(Foo(), static = TRUE) which will not return a reference. A static class is only living on object space.

Changes in version 0.9 (2001-04-02)

New Features

• Support for static methods. A static method is declared as myStatic = METHOD+STATIC and implemented as myStatic.myClass <- function(arg1, arg2, ...). Note that there is no this argument to static classes.

Changes in version 0.8 (2001-04-01)

Significant Changes

• Totally changed the declaration of methods in a class. Previously, one wrote myFcn = function() NULL and now one writes myFcn = METHOD where METHOD is predefined constant. This allows fields in a class to also contain functions, i.e. myField = sqrt(x), which was not possible in previous versions.

Changes in version 0.5 (2001-03-27)

Significant Changes

• This is the first public release.

Changes in version 0.2 (2001-03-16)

• ...

Changes in version 0.1 (2001-03-12)

• The very first version.

Changes in version 0.0 (2001-03-10)

• The very first attempt to create an object-oriented core for R. At this moment I was a beginner in R.