anytypes: Get the useful types of a data structure
Description
This function consolidataes data sets within lists and two dimensional data.
Like anylength the idea is to unify the accessors for various
data structures with a single common interface.
Usage
anytypes(...)
Arguments
...
Abstract function controlled by lambda.r
Value
The types or classes of a data structure
Details
anytypes(data, fun = class)
data - An object
fun - The function to use to get the types. Defaults to class, although
type or mode, etc. could be used
Depending on the type of structure utilized in code, one needs to call either
names or colnames to get information related to the data sets within the
structure. The use of two separate functions can cause errors and slows
development time as data structures passed from intermediate functions may
change over time, resulting in a broken interface.
By providing a thin layer over underlying accessors, this function attempts to
expedite development and add a bit of polymorphism to the semantics of names.
The explicit assumption is that data sets in two dimensional structures are
organized by column, as this is compatible with time-series objects such as
zoo and xts.