[R] Object name and Strings?

Prof Brian Ripley ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Tue Jul 18 11:26:22 CEST 2006


On Tue, 18 Jul 2006, Stéphane Cruveiller wrote:

> Thanks for your answer.
> 
> Here is what I am trying to do.
> I have a list which is called MyList. I would like to get only the "name"
> of this object as a simple characters string. i.e. Is there a function in R
> which is able
> to give:
> 
> > name<-fun(Mylist)
> > name
> "MyList"

myfun <- function(x) deparse(substitute(x))

That's how to find the name (if it was a name) given as a function 
argument.

> 
> 
> thanks in advance,
> 
> Stéphane.
> 
> 
> 
> Prof Brian Ripley a écrit :
> > On Tue, 18 Jul 2006, Stéphane Cruveiller wrote:
> >
> >   
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > Is there a simple way to convert an object name to a characters string?
> > >     
> >
> > Yes, as.character, as in
> >
> >   
> > > x <- as.name("foo")
> > > x
> > >     
> > foo
> >   
> > > as.character(x)
> > >     
> > [1] "foo"
> >
> > However, I suspect you are not using the words in their technical sense
> > (a name is a synonym for a symbol in R), so if this is not the answer,
> > please give us an example of what you are trying to do (which might be
> > deparse).

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595


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