FLQuant

The basic component of FLR objects. The FLQuant class is essentially an array used to store data of one particular type (e.g. catch data).

The data array of an FLQuant has five dimensions in FLCore versions < 2.0 and six in versions >= 2.0. However, often one or more of them will be collapsed.

The name of the first dimension of the data is not set and can be altered by the user. For example, the name could be age, length, vesselclass etc. Any character string is accepted, but it should contain no spaces. When not set it is usually refered to as the quant of the FLQuant. The next four dimensions of an FLQuant are, in this order, year, unit, season and area. year needs no explanation. unit is open to any sort of division that might be of use, like male/female, substocks etc. season and area allow for time and space subdivisions. For FLCore version >= 2.0 there is a six dimension, iter, used to store different iterations of the data (used for bootstrapping etc.).

The data in the array is stored in an unamed slot. Although it can be directly accessed, as objectname@.Data, it is better to use the available methods for selecting, subsetting and modifying FLQuants. Otherwise some of our operations might not return a proper FlQuant, but simply an object of class ‘array’.

Together with the data, FLQuants have an extra attribute called units. This is a character string to store information about the units of measurement of the data. Do not confuse it with the unit dimension. Users are allowed to use any name, but standard ones are encouraged as they allow for clear interpretation.

UML FIGURE

For details on slots and methods see here

For examples on how to create and use FLQuants see here