[BioC] Question about turning strings into variable names in R

J.delasHeras at ed.ac.uk J.delasHeras at ed.ac.uk
Thu Mar 1 14:58:47 CET 2007


Quoting "James W. MacDonald" <jmacdon at med.umich.edu>:

> Hi Jose,
>
> J.delasHeras at ed.ac.uk wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a situation where I have a vector of variable names. If I   
>> call  any of them, I get a text string (the name is surrounded by   
>> ""). How  can I use that as a variable name again?
>>
>> For instance, I have objects a, b and c, and a vector v<-c("a","b","c").
>> If I want to return the contents of a, I can't do just v[1],   
>> because  that only shows "a"...
>> Is there a simple way to indicate that "a" should be taken as the   
>> name of an object, and not as a string? If so, I haven't found it...
>
> I think you want get() here.
>
> get(v[1])
>
> Best,
>
> Jim

Brilliant! That's it exactly! Thanks, Jim!

Jose

-- 
Dr. Jose I. de las Heras                      Email: J.delasHeras at ed.ac.uk
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology    Phone: +44 (0)131 6513374
Institute for Cell & Molecular Biology        Fax:   +44 (0)131 6507360
Swann Building, Mayfield Road
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