CIU object from ciu object.A CIU object is an "object-oriented programming" object, i.e. it has its
own environment, private variables and methods etc. A CIU object is created
using ciu.new like ciu_obj <- ciu.new(...) and the object's methods
are then called as ciu_obj$method(...). This approach has numerous advantages
but CIU objects consume much more memory than "ordinary" R data structures.
ciu.to.CIU(ciu)CIU object
ciu object.
A ciu object is simply a list that contains all the "object variables" of
a CIU object, which is the reason why CIU <-> ciu conversions can be done at
any time. CIU -> ciu conversion doesn't have any overhead but ciu -> CIU does
require overhead due to the environment setup etc. Therefore, it is advisable
to avoid unnecessary CIU -> ciu conversions.
ciu objects are very memory-efficient because they are ordinary list objects
(however, make sure that ciu$CIU element's value is NULL). ciu objects also
give direct access to all the object variables that are private in a CIU object.
However, using ciu objects means that they have to be passed as a parameter
to all functions that use them. The advantages of object oriented programming
are of course lost too.