Quoting "James W. MacDonald" <jmacdon at="" med.umich.edu="">: > Hi Jose, > > J.delasHeras at ed.ac.uk wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I have a situation where I have a vector of variable names. If I >> call any of them, I get a text string (the name is surrounded by >> ""). How can I use that as a variable name again? >> >> For instance, I have objects a, b and c, and a vector v<-c("a","b","c"). >> If I want to return the contents of a, I can't do just v[1], >> because that only shows "a"... >> Is there a simple way to indicate that "a" should be taken as the >> name of an object, and not as a string? If so, I haven't found it... > > I think you want get() here. > > get(v[1]) > > Best, > > Jim Brilliant! That's it exactly! Thanks, Jim! Jose -- Dr. Jose I. de las Heras Email: J.delasHeras at ed.ac.uk The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology Phone: +44 (0)131 6513374 Institute for Cell & Molecular Biology Fax: +44 (0)131 6507360 Swann Building, Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh Edinburgh EH9 3JR UK

Thanks Sean and Steen, for alternative solutions. Great! I have used a list before for similar purposes, but I now wanted a more "direct" approach. 'get' and 'eval(parse())' is what I was looking for now. Thanks! Jose Quoting Sean Davis <sdavis2 at="" mail.nih.gov="">: > On Thursday 01 March 2007 07:22, J.delasHeras at ed.ac.uk wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I have a situation where I have a vector of variable names. If I call >> any of them, I get a text string (the name is surrounded by ""). How >> can I use that as a variable name again? >> >> For instance, I have objects a, b and c, and a vector v<-c("a","b","c"). >> If I want to return the contents of a, I can't do just v[1], because >> that only shows "a"... >> Is there a simple way to indicate that "a" should be taken as the name >> of an object, and not as a string? If so, I haven't found it... > > http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#How-can-I-turn-a -string-into-a-variable_003f > > However, you probably don't need (or want) to do this. Use a list instead. > > v <- list() > v[['a']] <- a > v[['b']] <- b > ... > > Sean > > -- Dr. Jose I. de las Heras Email: J.delasHeras at ed.ac.uk The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology Phone: +44 (0)131 6513374 Institute for Cell & Molecular Biology Fax: +44 (0)131 6507360 Swann Building, Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh Edinburgh EH9 3JR UK