Question

I have created an object in R that contains several attributes. How can I easily access them?

I can do:

attr(x, attributeName)

or:

attributes(x)$attributeName

but none of them is really convenient.

Is there a quicker way (like the dot in C++ or Java)?

Answer 1

Don’t use attributes for your object, use a list:

myobj <- structure(list(a = 1, b = 2), class = "myclass")
print.myclass <- function(x, ...) cat("A: ", x$a, " B: ", x$b, "\n", sep = "")
myobj

Of course, this might not work if you’re extending an existing object (e.g. vector), but in my experience it’s a generally better way to build objects.