[R] Naming an object after another object...can it be done?

Bert Gunter gunter.berton at gene.com
Thu Jan 17 22:20:17 CET 2013


?
But Pat...

The canonical way to do this is:

myPlotFin(Col2 ~ Col1, data = dat)

I have no idea what the OP wants, but my guess is that the right
answer is: Don't do that.

Cheers,
Bert

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Patrick Burns
<pburns at pburns.seanet.com> wrote:
> If you want the column names but not
> the data frame name, then you could do:
>
> with(dat, myPlotFun(Col1, Col2))
>
> Pat
>
> On 17/01/2013 20:07, Patrick Burns wrote:
>>
>> You are thinking that 'names' does something different
>> than it does.  What you seem to be after is the
>> deparse-substitute idiom:
>>
>> dat <- data.frame(Col1=1:10, Col2=rnorm(10))
>> myPlotFun <- function(x, y) {
>>     plot(y ~ x, xlab=deparse(substitute(x)), ylab=deparse(substitute(y)))
>> }
>> myPlotFun(dat$Col1, dat$Col2)
>>
>>
>> Pat
>>
>> On 17/01/2013 18:53, mtb954 at gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello R-helpers,
>>>
>>> I have run the following line of code:
>>>
>>> x<-dat$col
>>>
>>> and now I would like to assign names(x) to be "dat$col" (e.g., a
>>> character
>>> string equal to the column name that I assigned to x).
>>>
>>> What I am trying to do is to assign columns in my dataframe to new
>>> objects
>>> called x and y. Then I will use x and y within a new function to make
>>> plots
>>> with informative axis labels (e.g., "dat$col" instead of "x". So, for
>>> example, I would like to plot (y~x,xlab=names(x)) and have "dat$col"
>>> printed in the x-axis label. I can do this all manually, by typing
>>>
>>> names(x)<- "dat$col)
>>>
>>> but I'd like to do it with non-specific code within my function so I
>>> don't
>>> have to type the variable names manually each time.
>>>
>>> Many thanks,
>>>
>>> Mark Na
>>>
>>>     [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>
> --
> Patrick Burns
> pburns at pburns.seanet.com
> twitter: @portfolioprobe
> http://www.portfolioprobe.com/blog
> http://www.burns-stat.com
> (home of 'Some hints for the R beginner'
> and 'The R Inferno')
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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

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