[R] How to use a text in an object of class character position to create a vector with the text as name

R. Michael Weylandt michael.weylandt at gmail.com
Tue Jul 17 20:23:33 CEST 2012


On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Sarah Goslee <sarah.goslee at gmail.com> wrote:
> In general, you use assign() to do that, but having object names
> containing spaces should be avoided.
>
>> mytext <- "Experiment name : CONTROL DB AD_1"
>> mytext
> [1] "Experiment name : CONTROL DB AD_1"
>> mytext <- sub("Experiment name : ", "", mytext)
>> mytext
> [1] "CONTROL DB AD_1"
>>
>> assign(mytext, 1:10)
>> ls()
> [1] "CONTROL DB AD_1" "mytext"
>> "CONTROL DB AD_1"
> [1] "CONTROL DB AD_1"
>>
>>
>> CONTROL DB AD_1
> Error: unexpected symbol in "CONTROL DB"
>
> Since you can't access your object by typing its name at the R prompt,
> either with or without quotes, you've kind of got a problem. You could
> use get(), but at that point why not just name your object something
> that follows the R naming conventions?

I know Sarah knows this, but just for archive completeness: backticks.

`cat or dog` <- 3

cat or dog # Error

`cat or dog` # 3

Of course, this allows such insanity as

`4` <- 15

which is somewhat peculiar.

I still second the advice to use legal R names and uses underscores
where spaces might be desired.

raw_data <- 3

etc.

Best,
Michael

>
> Sarah
>
> On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 11:08 AM, benji <benlucas at illinois.edu> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>>titletool<-read.csv("TotalCSVData.csv",header=FALSE,sep=",")
>>
>>> class(titletool)
>> [1] "data.frame"
>>
>>>titletool[1,1]
>> [1] Experiment name : CONTROL DB AD_1
>>
>>>t<-titletootl[1,1]
>>
>>>t
>> [1] Experiment name : CONTROL DB AD_1
>>
>>>class(t)
>> [1] "character"
>>
>> now i want to create an object (vector) with the name "Experiment name :
>> CONTROL DB AD_1" , or even better if possible CONTROL DB AD_1
>>
>> Thank you
>>
>
>
> --
> Sarah Goslee
> http://www.functionaldiversity.org
>
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