Advanced Object-oriented Programming In R: Stat... Apr 2026

Methods belong to generic functions , not the objects themselves. When you call plot(x) , R looks at the class of x and decides which plot method to run.

Reference Classes are built into base R and function similarly to R6 but are built on top of S4.

R6 (via the R6 package ) provides "classical" OOP similar to Java or C++.

Managing stateful objects (like database connections, caches, or GUI widgets) and avoiding R’s usual copy-on-modify behavior.