jim holtman <jholtman <at> gmail.com> writes: > > match(f, names(z)) > [1] 2 3 Jim, thanks so much, that's right on. Patrick, thanks to you too, but yours is not the same as what I asked: > z <- c(3,4,5,4) > names(z)<- c("a","b","c","b") > z[f] b c 4 5 Yours returns the actual values in z, not the indexes in z, i.e., not [1] 2 3