[R] Pasting function arguments and strings

Bert Gunter gunter.berton at gene.com
Wed Oct 13 18:10:17 CEST 2010


If I understand you correctly, just arg2(arg1) will work fine...One of
the nice features of R.

Example:

f <- function(dat,fun=mean,...)
{
   fun(dat, ...) ## ... allows extra arguments to fun
}


f( rnorm(10), trim=.05) ## trimmed mean
x <- 1:10
f(x, fun = max,na.rm=TRUE)


Cheers,
Bert


On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 8:57 AM, Manta <mantino84 at libero.it> wrote:
>
> Dear R community,
>
> I am struggling a bit with a probably fairly simple task. I need to use some
> already existing functions as argument for a new function that I am going to
> create. 'dataset' is an argument, and it comprises objects named
> 'mean_test', 'sd_test', 'kurt_test' and so on. 'arg1' tells what object I
> want (mean, sd, kurt) while 'arg2' tells what to do to the object taken in
> 'arg1' (again could be mean, sd, but also any other operation/function).
>
> I was thinking about something like:
>
> myfunction<-function(dataset,arg1,arg2)
>
> {
>
> attach(dataset)
> result=arg2(paste(arg1,"_test"))
>
> return(result)
>
> }
>
> But this of course does not work! 'arg1' is of type closure and I cannot set
> it as character. Moreover, paste will create a string, and I do not think I
> can pass a string to the function of 'arg2'. How should I do?
>
> Thanks,
> Marco
> --
> View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Pasting-function-arguments-and-strings-tp2993905p2993905.html
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>



-- 
Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics



More information about the R-help mailing list