Author: Bioconductor Core Team
Date: 2026-04-29

# BiocBaseUtils Quick Start

Bioconductor Core Team

#### April 29, 2026

# Contents

# 1 BiocBaseUtils

The `BiocBaseUtils` package provides a suite of helper functions designed to help developers. Currently, it covers three topics often encountered during the development process.

1. Assertions - Type checks for logical, character, and numeric inputs
2. Slot replacement - Replacing the value of object slots
3. `show` method - Limiting the output of internal components of a class

# 2 Installation

Install the package directly from Bioconductor:

    if (!requireNamespace("BiocManager", quietly = TRUE))
        install.packages("BiocManager")
    BiocManager::install("BiocBaseUtils")

# 3 Load Package

    library(BiocBaseUtils)

# 4 Assertions

We provide a number of functions that helps the developer establish the type of class of a particular object. These include `integer`, `numeric`, `character`, and `logical`; types often used in R / Bioconductor.

## 4.1 Logical

    isTRUEorFALSE(TRUE)
    #> [1] TRUE
    isTRUEorFALSE(FALSE)
    #> [1] TRUE
    isTRUEorFALSE(NA, na.ok = TRUE)
    #> [1] TRUE

## 4.2 Character

    isScalarCharacter(LETTERS)
    #> [1] FALSE
    isScalarCharacter("L")
    #> [1] TRUE
    isCharacter(LETTERS)
    #> [1] TRUE
    isCharacter(NA_character_, na.ok = TRUE)
    #> [1] TRUE
    isZeroOneCharacter("")
    #> [1] FALSE
    isZeroOneCharacter("", zchar = TRUE)
    #> [1] TRUE

## 4.3 Numeric

    isScalarInteger(1L)
    #> [1] TRUE
    isScalarInteger(1)
    #> [1] FALSE

    isScalarNumber(1)
    #> [1] TRUE
    isScalarNumber(1:2)
    #> [1] FALSE

# 5 Slot replacement

This function is often used in packages that establish formal S4 classes. When updating the value of a slot, one often uses the `setSlots` function.

    setClass("A", representation = representation(slot1 = "numeric"))
    aclass <- new("A", slot1 = 1:10)
    aclass
    #> An object of class "A"
    #> Slot "slot1":
    #>  [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

Now we use the `setSlots` function to update the values in the object.

    aclass <- setSlots(aclass, slot1 = 11:20)
    aclass
    #> An object of class "A"
    #> Slot "slot1":
    #>  [1] 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Note that `setSlots` provides the same functionality as `BiocGenerics:::replaceSlots` but is more consistent with Bioconductor the setter and getter language.

# 6 `show` method

The `selectSome` function allows the developer to display a limited amount of information from a developed class. Note that the use of the `@` here is due to the minimal implementation in the examples provided. The developer should always provide an interface to access the internal components of the class via an ‘accessor’ function.

    setMethod("show", signature = "A", function(object) {
        s1info <- getElement(object, "slot1")
        cat("A sequence:", selectSome(s1info))
    })
    aclass
    #> A sequence: 11 12 ... 19 20

# 7 Contributing

`BiocBaseUtils` is a work in progress and we welcome contributions. There are quite a few often-used utility functions that are yet to be included in the package. We would like to keep the dependencies in this package minimal; therefore, contributions should mostly use base R.

# 8 Session Info

    sessionInfo()
    #> R version 4.6.0 RC (2026-04-17 r89917)
    #> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
    #> Running under: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
    #>
    #> Matrix products: default
    #> BLAS:   /home/biocbuild/bbs-3.23-bioc/R/lib/libRblas.so
    #> LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.12.0  LAPACK version 3.12.0
    #>
    #> locale:
    #>  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
    #>  [3] LC_TIME=en_GB              LC_COLLATE=C
    #>  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
    #>  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
    #>  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
    #> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
    #>
    #> time zone: America/New_York
    #> tzcode source: system (glibc)
    #>
    #> attached base packages:
    #> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
    #>
    #> other attached packages:
    #> [1] BiocBaseUtils_1.14.0 BiocStyle_2.40.0
    #>
    #> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
    #>  [1] digest_0.6.39       R6_2.6.1            bookdown_0.46
    #>  [4] fastmap_1.2.0       xfun_0.57           cachem_1.1.0
    #>  [7] knitr_1.51          htmltools_0.5.9     rmarkdown_2.31
    #> [10] lifecycle_1.0.5     cli_3.6.6           sass_0.4.10
    #> [13] jquerylib_0.1.4     compiler_4.6.0      tools_4.6.0
    #> [16] evaluate_1.0.5      bslib_0.10.0        yaml_2.3.12
    #> [19] otel_0.2.0          BiocManager_1.30.27 jsonlite_2.0.0
    #> [22] rlang_1.2.0

Please report minimally reproducible bugs at our github issue page.