The (Storage) Mode of an Object

Usage

mode(x)
mode(x) <- "<mode>"
storage.mode(x)
storage.mode(x) <- "<mode>"

Description

mode and storage.mode provide means of determining the type or storage mode of an object. Both return a character string giving the (storage) mode of the object – often the same – both relying on the output of typeof(x), see the example below.

The two assignment versions are currently identical. Both mode(x) <- newmode and storage.mode(x) <- newmode change the mode or storage.mode of object x to newmode.

See Also

typeof for the R-internal ``mode'', attributes.

Examples

sapply(options(),mode)

cex3 <- c("NULL","1","1:1","1i","list(1)","data.frame(x=1)", "pairlist(pi)",
  "args", "lm", "formals(lm)[[1]]",  "formals(lm)[[2]]",
  "y~x","(y~x)[[1]]", "expression(x <- pi)[[1]][[1]]")
lex3 <- sapply(cex3, function(x) eval(parse(text=x)))
mex3 <- t(sapply(lex3, function(x) c(typeof(x), storage.mode(x), mode(x))))
dimnames(mex3) <- list(cex3, c("typeof(.)","storage.mode(.)","mode(.)"))
mex3

## This also makes a local copy of  `pi':
storage.mode(pi) <- "complex"
storage.mode(pi)
rm(pi)

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