[R] paste together object names to pass it on to a function

[Gabor Grothendieck]

Or perhaps:

lapply(gnuff, "[[", "LE")


On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Patrick Burns
<pburns at pburns.seanet.com> wrote:
> A rule of thumb is that if the solution seems a lot
> harder than the task, there is probably a better
> approach.  I think you want something like:
>
> lapply(gnuff[nam], function(x) x$LE)
>
>
> Patrick Burns
> patrick at burns-stat.com
> +44 (0)20 8525 0696
> http://www.burns-stat.com
> (home of "The R Inferno" and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")
>
> stefan.duke at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>> I have a maybe trivial question, but I simply don't understand well
>> enought how to work with text/strings:
>>
>> I have a rather compelx data structure, a big list with several
>> sub-lists/dataframes and for certain calculations  (which I do in
>> loops), I only need a certain group of  sub-lists/dataframes, which I
>> want to specify with a name vector and paste together the object name
>> and pass it on to a function.
>>
>> Here an (hopefully) instructive example
>>
>> #Data Example
>> gnuff<-list()
>> gnuff$IHD$LE<-66
>> gnuff$LUNG$LE <-55
>>
>> #This is the list, where I collect data for different diseases at the
>> second level of the list
>> #Now I want to do calcualtions just for these two diseases and the
>> sub-list "LE" within these diseases
>>
>>
>> nam <- c("LUNG","IHD")
>>
>> for(i in 1:2)
>> x[i] <- paste("gnuff",nam[i],"LE",sep="$") /2
>> x
>>
>> #So I try to paste the name of the object which I mean
>> (gnuff$IHD$LEand gnuff$LUNG$LE, respectivly), but R treats them as a
>> string and not as the name of an object.
>> # I tried seveal commands to make it treat like an object name (the
>> get() looked most promising), but so far to no avail
>>
>> #commands I have tried
>> j <- eval(paste("gnuff",nam[i],"LE",sep="$"))
>> parse(paste("gnuff",nam[i],sep="$"))
>> quote(paste("gnuff",nam[i],sep="$"))
>> get(paste("gnuff",nam[i],sep="$"))
>>
>> Anybody any hints where to look?
>> Thanks and have a great weekend!
>> Best,
>> Stefan
>>
>> ______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>