[R] Methods to explore R data structures

[Greg Snow]

The TkListView function in the TeachingDemos package is an interactive tool for looking at the structure and contents of lists and other objects.

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Timothy Wu
> Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2010 3:14 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Methods to explore R data structures
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm very confused about R structures and the methods to go with them.
> I'm
> using R for microarray analysis with Bioconductors. Suppose without
> reading
> the documentations, what's the best way to explore a data structure
> when you
> know nothing about it?
> 
> I am currently using is() / class() to see what the object is. str() /
> attributes() to probe inside the object, and
> something at something$something
> to walk it and explore. Is there any other way? Also, without reading
> documentations, is there a way to know what functions are available to
> extract data from it? For example, there is sampleNames() which works
> on
> ExpressionSet and AnnotatedDataFrame (which is a part of
> ExpressionSet). How
> do I know they are available (as sometimes I can't recall where I've
> seen
> them and I forgot the function names). And what are R functions? Are
> those
> two separate functions or polymorphic functions? I'm also pretty
> confused
> about S3, S4, or the regular list. I guess I'm fairly confused about R
> in
> general.
> 
> Any good source of reading (hopefully short and understandable, too)
> would
> be appreciated. Thanks.
> 
> Timothy
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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