[R] Numeric Column Labels in Excel Function

[jim holtman]

If you use XLConnect, to can reference the column symbolically to
retrieve the data.

Jim Holtman
Data Munger Guru

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
Tell me what you want to do, not how you want to do it.


On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 4:30 PM, Dustin Fife <fife.dustin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I frequently get requests to do data analysis where the person
> references an excel column. e.g., "I want to analyze [insert complex
> variable name], located at column AAQ in Excel."  I've been doing is
> gsub and inserting a part of the string for the complex variable name,
> then going from there. But, I was trying to make function that returns
> the following vector:
>
> excelVector = A, B, C, D,...AA, AB, AC...ZA, ZB, ZC,...AAA, AAB, AAC, etc.
>
> In other words, the argument would have one argument (n, or the number
> of columns), then it would return a list like that shown above. Then,
> all I would have to do is
>
> column.of.interest = which(excelVector=="AAQ")
>
> But I'm a bit stumped. The first part is easy:
>
> LETTERS[1:26]
>
> The next would probably use expand.grid, but all my potential
> solutions are pretty clunky.
>
> Any ideas?
>
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