[BioC] Question about turning strings into variable names in R

[Sean Davis]

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