For those who suggest other ways to do this, I ALREADY HAVE ANOTHER DESIGN SOLUTION, DESCRIBED AT THE END.
That being said, I want to know if it's possible to reference a slot in an S4 class from another slot, i.e. I'd like to have the "self.*" semantics of Python so that I can reuse a slot. That is, for various reasons it would be nice to be able to do something like: setClass("fooWfcn", representation(dat1="vector", dat2="vector", fn1="function", fn2="function"), prototype=list(dat1=0:10, dat2=10:20, fn1=function(x) { return(x - mean(self.dat1)) }, fn2=function() { mean(self.dat2) })) and in the context of foo <- new("fooWfcn") have self.dat2 refer to [EMAIL PROTECTED], etc (I.e. in an instantiated object, have the reference be within the object). One could easily imagine doing this on the fly, as well, during the "new" call. I've looked this up in a number of books, on-line talks/papers, etc, but havn't managed to find the right page describing it as possible or impossible. I think it is the latter (impossible), since one could easily end up with a nasty self-referencing infinite loop (fn1 refering to fn2 refering to fn1). If it's the former, I'd be interested in knowing about it. Anyway, here's the DESIGN SOLUTION: write methods which do the appropriate "combination". Critique: pro - it works, it's simple, and I've already done it. con - for the problem I'm looking at, it's not quite so clean, adding one more layer of indirection that in Python or CLOS I'd not need, multiplied by a fair number of subclasses. best, -tony [EMAIL PROTECTED] Muttenz, Switzerland. "Commit early,commit often, and commit in a repository from which we can easily roll-back your mistakes" (AJR, 4Jan05). ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html