[R] using string as variable name in model

[Roni Kobrosly]

Hi,

I made a small table of strings that will serve as variable names for lm models I will run. The table looks like this:

> varnames
   num                        name
1    1      zCANTAB_log_IED_totaltrials
2    2       zCANTAB_log_IED_preED
3    3        zCANTAB_logPALerrors
4    4           zCANTAB_PALstages
5    5              zCANTAB_logRTI
6    6       zCANTAB_RVP_Totalmisses
7    7      zCANTAB_log_RVP_falsealarm
8    8           zCANTAB_DMS_12000
9    9         zCANTAB_PRM_Percent
10  10         zCANTAB_SRM_Percent
11  11     zCANTAB_sqrt_SWM_within
12  12      zCANTAB_sqrt_SWM_Total
13  13                  zSS_WJ_PC 
14  14                 zSS_WJ_CALC
15  15                   zSS_WJ_LW
16  16                   zSS_WJ_AP
17  17                   zSS_WJ_MF


What I'm trying to do is 


varnames[1,2] -> outcome
			
lm(outcome ~ income + covariate1 + coviarate2, data=my.data) -> model

I get the following error message:
"Error in model.frame.default(formula = outcome ~ Hollings_Enroll + Child_sex +  : 
  variable lengths differ (found for 'Hollings_Enroll')"

But when I run the model:
lm(zCANTAB_log_IED_totaltrials ~ income + covariate1 + coviarate2, data=my.data) -> model

it works fine. Eventually, once I resolve this, I'd like to make a custom R function to automatically generate 17 regression models with these 17 outcome variable strings. Do you have any ideas how to resolve this error?

Thanks!
-Roni