NextMethod not working after upgrading from R version 3.6.1 to 4.1.1

Question

I wrote an R package a few years ago to go with a paper I was writing, called PhiCor . This was working fine, but I recently had someone contact me as they couldn't get it to work with their version of R 4.1.1.

This is the most recent commit not working (so the code that isn't working can be accessed later:

Error in NextMethod("CorIndex"): no method to invoke

I have upgraded R and I can replicate the error. But I do not know why it isn't working. This is where the error is showing up:

CorIndex <- function(InDataframe, speciesbinary,weighted, group, SquareID = NULL){
 speciesbinary = InDataframe[,speciesbinary]
 weighted = InDataframe[,weighted]
 group = InDataframe[,group]
 NextMethod("CorIndex")
}

I then have numerous other functions:

CorIndex.default <- function(InDataframe, speciesbinary,weighted, group, SquareID = NULL){

CorIndex.TargetVar <- function(CorIndexVarInput, targetgroup){

CorIndex.groupEqual <- function(CorIndexTargetVarInput){

In particular, the one that was being run that triggered the error was:

CorIndex.all.plusP <- function(InDataframe, speciesbinary, weighted, group, numberIteration = 1000, SquareID = NULL, toroidal = FALSE){

Which was being run with the example data I included in the package:

Species1_AllPhiPvalues = CorIndex.all.plusP(InDataframe = Species1, speciesbinary = "Species1", weighted = 'Proportion', group = 'HabId', SquareID = 'LocationID')

Answer 1

For now I have simply done this:

CorIndex <- function(InDataframe, speciesbinary,weighted, group, SquareID = NULL){
  speciesbinary = InDataframe[,speciesbinary]
  weighted = InDataframe[,weighted]
  group = InDataframe[,group]
  #NextMethod("CorIndex")
  CorIndex.default(InDataframe,speciesbinary,weighted, group, SquareID)

Bit of a bodge exposing my incomplete understanding of S3. Seems to work, but a bit scruffy and I am not sure a problem won't pop up somewhere else.