The oce package provides functions for working with Oceanographic data, for calculations that are specific to Oceanography, and for producing graphics that match the conventions of the field.
A key function is read.oce, which will attempt
to read Oceanographic data in raw format. This uses
oceMagic to try to detect the file type,
based on the file name and contents. If it proves impossible
to detect the type, users should next try a more specialized
function, e.g. read.ctd for CTD files, or
read.ctd.sbe for Teledyne-Seabird files.
A list of the generic methods in oce is provided by `methods(class="oce")`; a few that are used frequently are as follows.
Find the value of an item in the object's
metadata or data slot. If the item does
not exist, but can be calculated from the other items,
then the calculated value is returned. As an example of the
latter, consider the built-in ctd dataset, which does
not contain potential temperature, "theta". Using
ctd[["theta"]] therefore causes swTheta
to be called, to calculate theta.
See [[,oce-method or type ?"[[,oce-method"
to learn more.
Alters the named item in the object's metadata or
data slot. If the item does not exist, it is created.
See [[<-,oce-method or type ?"[[<-,oce-method"
to learn more.
Displays some information about the object named as an
argument, including a few elements from its metadata slot
and some statistics of the contents of its data slot.
See summary,oce-method or type ?"summary,oce-method"
to learn more.
Takes a subset of an oce object.
See subset,oce-method or type ?"subset,oce-method"
to learn more.
Over a dozen specialized data types are handled by oce, with generic plots and summaries for each, along with the specialized functions needed for typical Oceanographic analysis.
See oce-class for a summary of the class structure
and links to documentation for the many subclasses of
oce objects, each aligned with a class of instrument or
or type of dataset.