Someone with more experience could certainly provide a more precise answer, but basically you came across something called generic functions in R. This concept allows mean() to be called on various data structures without extra care.
See ?UseMethod methods(mean) getAnywhere(mean.default) For more details see the R language definition manual. Petr ebi napsal(a): > Dear SIr, > > > In case of looking at the codes of the fuction, "cov", > > we find all the codings below. But, incase of "mean", we don't find > the contents. > > Please show me the way to look at all the codings of any functions. > > Best regards, > Kei > ----------------------- > >> cov > function (x, y = NULL, use = "all.obs", method = c("pearson", > "kendall", "spearman")) > { > na.method <- pmatch(use, c("all.obs", "complete.obs", > "pairwise.complete.obs")) > method <- match.arg(method) > if (is.data.frame(y)) > y <- as.matrix(y) > else stopifnot(is.atomic(y)) > if (is.data.frame(x)) > x <- as.matrix(x) > else { > stopifnot(is.atomic(x)) > if (!is.matrix(x)) { > if (is.null(y)) > stop("supply both 'x' and 'y' or a matrix-like 'x'") > x <- as.vector(x) > } > } > if (method == "pearson") > .Internal(cov(x, y, na.method, method == "kendall")) > else if (na.method != 3) { > Rank <- function(u) if (is.matrix(u)) > apply(u, 2, rank, na.last = "keep") > else rank(u, na.last = "keep") > if (na.method == 2) { > ok <- complete.cases(x, y) > x <- if (is.matrix(x)) > x[ok, ] > else x[ok] > if (!is.null(y)) > y <- if (is.matrix(y)) > y[ok, ] > else y[ok] > } > x <- Rank(x) > if (!is.null(y)) > y <- Rank(y) > .Internal(cov(x, y, na.method, method == "kendall")) > } > else stop("cannot handle 'pairwise.complete.obs'") > } > <environment: namespace:stats> >> mean > function (x, ...) > UseMethod("mean") > <environment: namespace:base> > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > 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. > -- Petr Klasterecky Dept. of Probability and Statistics Charles University in Prague Czech Republic ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list 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.