I think the fact that character is a built-in type rather than an S3 class has something to do with it.
On December 2, 2021 11:31:47 AM PST, Bert Gunter <bgunter.4...@gmail.com> wrote: >... and probably a dumb one and almost certainly not of interest to >most R users. But anyway... > >?"+" says: >"The unary and binary arithmetic operators are generic functions: >methods can be written for them individually or via the Ops group >generic function. " > >So: >"+.character" <- function(e1, e2) paste0(e1, e2) >## but this doesn't 'work': >> "a" + "b" >Error in "a" + "b" : non-numeric argument to binary operator > >## but explicitly invoking the method does 'work' : >> "+.character"('a','b') >[1] "ab" > >##Note also: >> methods("+") >[1] +.character +.Date +.IDate* +.POSIXt +.trellis* > >So what am I failing to understand? >Thanks. > >Bert Gunter > >______________________________________________ >R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see >https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. -- Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.