[R] accessing information in data.frame

[Peter Dalgaard BSA]

Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de> writes:

> "Dr. Berthold Kramm" wrote:
> > 
> > After reading a data.frame using, such as a <- read.spss("data.sav")
> > I want to give the column index 'i', or a[i] to a function, which after
> > some calculation, should print out the results to the standard output.
> > 
> > I am struggling how to access the data itself, as e.g. sum(a[i]) 
> 
>  sum(a[,i])

Or sum(a[[i]]) or a$age ? Notice that read.spss() gives a list,
not a data frame so a[i,j]-indexing is not going to work without

a <- as.data.frame(read.spss("data.sav"))

Also notice the attach() function.

> 
> > does
> > not work in this context. In addition I need to know the name of the
> > variable within the function in order to generate a meaningful output,
> > and  have not found any way to obtain the name of the variable.
> 
>  deparse(substitute(x))

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907
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