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% File src/library/stats/man/terms.object.Rd
% Part of the R package, http://www.R-project.org
% Copyright 1995-2010 R Core Development Team
% Distributed under GPL 2 or later

\name{terms.object}
\title{Description of Terms Objects}
\alias{terms.object}
\description{
  An object of class \code{\link{terms}} holds information about a
  model.  Usually the model was specified in terms of a
  \code{\link{formula}} and that formula was used to determine the terms
  object.
}
\value{
  The object itself is simply the formula supplied to the call of
  \code{\link{terms.formula}}.  The object has a number of attributes
  and they are used to construct the model frame:

  \item{factors}{A matrix of variables by terms showing which variables
    appear in which terms.  The entries are 0 if the variable does not
    occur in the term, 1 if it does occur and should be coded by
    contrasts, and 2 if it occurs and should be coded via dummy
    variables for all levels (as when an intercept or lower-order term
    is missing).  If there are no terms other than an intercept and offsets,
    this is \code{numeric(0)}.}
  \item{term.labels}{A character vector containing the labels for each
    of the terms in the model, except for offsets.  Non-syntactic names
    will be quoted by backticks.  Note that these are after possible
    re-ordering (unless argument \code{keep.order} was false).}
  \item{variables}{A call to \code{list} of the variables in the model.}
  \item{intercept}{Either 0, indicating no intercept is to be fit, or 1
    indicating that an intercept is to be fit.}
  \item{order}{A vector of the same length as \code{term.labels}
    indicating the order of interaction for each term.}
  \item{response}{The index of the variable (in variables) of the
    response (the left hand side of the formula). Zero, if there is no
    response.}
  \item{offset}{If the model contains \code{\link{offset}} terms there
    is an \code{offset} attribute indicating which variable(s) are offsets}
  \item{specials}{If a \code{specials} argument was given to
    \code{\link{terms.formula}} there is a \code{specials} attribute, a
    pairlist of vectors (one for each specified special function) giving
    numeric indices of the arguments of the list returned as the
    \code{variables} attribute which contain these special functions.}
  \item{dataClasses}{optional. A named character vector giving the classes
    (as given by \code{\link{.MFclass}}) of the variables used in a fit.}

  The object has class \code{c("terms", "formula")}.
}
\note{
  These objects are different from those found in S.  In particular
  there is no \code{formula} attribute, instead the object is itself a
  formula.  Thus, the mode of a terms object is different as well. 

  Examples of the \code{specials} argument can be seen in the
  \code{\link{aov}} and \code{\link[survival]{coxph}} functions, the
  latter from package \pkg{survival}.
}
\seealso{
  \code{\link{terms}}, \code{\link{formula}}.
}
\examples{
## use of specials (as used for gam() in packages mgcv and gam)
(tf <- terms(y ~ x + x:z + s(x), specials = "s"))
## Note that the "factors" attribute has variables as row names
## and term labels as column names, both as character vectors. 
attr(tf, "specials")    # index 's' variable(s)
rownames(attr(tf, "factors"))[attr(tf, "specials")$s]

## we can keep the order by
terms(y ~ x + x:z + s(x), specials = "s", keep.order = TRUE)
}
%%--- MM: I would really like instructive examples here...
\keyword{models}