Finds the method that callNextMethod() should chain to

Attempts to find the "next" method in the inheritance chain. This would (ideally) be the method that methods::callNextMethod() would chain to, as a result of the method methods::addNextMethod() would find (and return in the nextMethod slot of the MethodWithNext object). Hence, in theory one shouldn't ever need this, but unfortunately addNextMethod() is broken (and errors out) if one of the classes in the signature name-clashes with an S4 class defined in another package that is loaded.

Usage

findNextMethod(method, f = NULL, envir = topenv())

Arguments

method

MethodDefinition, the method for which to find the next method

f

standardGeneric, the standard generic for which to find the next method. By default this will be obtained from method.

envir

the environment in which to find the method

Value

a MethodDefinition object that is the next method in the chain by inheritance

Details

The next method will be determined by the S4 inheritance chain. However, this function will walk only the inheritance chain of those arguments in the signature that are defined in the package of the generic method from which this function was invoked (directly or indirectly). If there are no such parameters in the signature, or if there is more than one, finding the next method is handed off to methods::addNextMethod().

Note

In theory a class name clash between packages shouldn't be a problem because class names can be namespaced, and the MethodDefinition object passed to addNextMethod() has all the necessary namespace information. Hopefully, at some point this gets fixed in R, and then we don't need this anymore.