[R] Name of data.frame as a text string?

[Mark Knecht]

On 7/2/09, Ted Harding <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 02-Jul-09 19:00:44, Mark Knecht wrote:
>  > I've passed a data.frame as an input into a function which does some
>  > plotting on a 4x4 matrix of certain parameters within in the
>  > data.frame. I'd like to add a small header on top of each plot with
>  > the name of the data.frame so that it's clear as I compare these 16
>  > things where each on came from.
>  >
>  > So far I haven't found the right way to get the name of the data.frame
>  > as a string which I can use in something like mtext. Is there one? If
>  > I put dummy text in, or take the time to pass in the name by hand,
>  > then I do get titles just as I'd like, but I'd far rather let the name
>  > of the data.frame speak for itself.
>  >
>  > Thanks,
>  > Mark
>
>
> One way to do this (which is how I usually do it) is to set up the
>  dataframe name as a string variable, and then use this as required.
>
>  For instance:
>
>   datafr <- "My1stDF"
>   DF <- read.csv(paste(datafr,".csv",sep="")
>   {<do things>}
>   plot(whatever,main=paste("Data from", datafr),...)
>
>  which will read the CSV file whose name corresponds to what you have
>  set 'datafr' to, and then put a corresponding header into the plot.
>
>  This is a particularly useful technique if you want to loop through
>  several datasets, on the lines of
>
>   DataFrs <- c("My1stDF", "My2ndDFD", "My3rdDF", "My4thDF")
>   for( datafr in DataFrs ) {
>     {<stuff like the above>}
>   }
>
>  Several variants of this kind of approach are possible!
>
>  Hoping this helps,
>  Ted.
>

Yep, doing it that way is very sensible. I've got the name in my hand
at the point I read the file in. Easy to use this way and probably a
good long-term solution.

Cheers,
Mark