[R] assignment of inidividual variables from spss save files

[Mike Day]

New to R, can't afford SPSS!

Why can't I assign spss variables? Here are the details.

 > ### I've read in my collaborator's sav file using read.spss, eg
 > children = read.spss(filename)
 > ### It has many variables
 > length(children)
[1] 347
 > ### and I would like to assign individual variables.
 > ### I can of course type out all the ones I want, eg
 > ADULTS11<-children[18]
 > ### But I'm lazy, so tried:
 > (function (x,n){assign(names(x[n]),x[n])})(children,2)
 > ### where
 > names(children[2])
[1] "ADNUTS06"
 > ### but
 > ADNUTS06
Error: Object "ADNUTS06" not found
 > ### I've tried lots of variations, including creating and
 > ### evaluating statements such as "ADNUTS06<-children[2]",
 > ### but without apparently yielding the required variable.

I expect the answer will be "You shouldn’t start from here!"
Ideas welcome.

Thanks, Mike