R help - Feb 2023 - Generic Function read?

Dear R-Users,

I noticed that *read* is not a generic function. Although it could 
benefit from the functionality available for generic functions:

read = function(file, ...) UseMethod("read")

methods(read)
 ?# [1] read.csv???? read.csv2??? read.dcf???? read.delim read.delim2? 
read.DIF???? read.fortran
 ?# [8] read.ftable? read.fwf???? read.socket? read.table

The users would still need to call the full function name. But it seems 
useful to be able to find rapidly what formats can be read; including 
with other packages (e.g. for Excel, SAS, ... - although most packages 
do not adhere to the generic naming convention, but maybe they will 
change in the future).

Note:
This should be possible (even though impractical), but actually does NOT 
work:
read = function(file, ...) UseMethod("read")
file = "file.csv"
class(file) = c("csv", class(file));
read(file)

Should it not work?

Sincerely,

Leonard

Have a look at the {rio} package.

On Tue, 28 Feb 2023 at 15:00, Leonard Mada via R-help <r-help at
r-project.org>
wrote:
> Dear R-Users,
>
> I noticed that *read* is not a generic function. Although it could
> benefit from the functionality available for generic functions:
>
> read = function(file, ...) UseMethod("read")
>
> methods(read)
>   # [1] read.csv     read.csv2    read.dcf     read.delim read.delim2
> read.DIF     read.fortran
>   # [8] read.ftable  read.fwf     read.socket  read.table
>
> The users would still need to call the full function name. But it seems
> useful to be able to find rapidly what formats can be read; including
> with other packages (e.g. for Excel, SAS, ... - although most packages
> do not adhere to the generic naming convention, but maybe they will
> change in the future).
>
> Note:
> This should be possible (even though impractical), but actually does NOT
> work:
> read = function(file, ...) UseMethod("read")
> file = "file.csv"
> class(file) = c("csv", class(file));
> read(file)
>
> Should it not work?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Leonard
>
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

-- 
John Kane
Kingston ON Canada

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