[R] do calculations as defined by a string / expand mathematical statements in R

[R. Michael Weylandt]

Didn't three of us give you a function (in various flavors) that would
do the mean for variable inputs, reading them from a list? (Though
David's was admittedly much cooler than mine!)

Anyways, look into parse(text=do) with eval() if you want to go the
string route.

Michael

On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Martin Batholdy <batholdy at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Dear R-group,
>
>
> is there a way to perform calculations that are defined in a string format?
>
>
> for example I have different variables:
>
> x1 <- 3
> x2 <- 1
> x4 <- 1
>
> and a string-variable:
>
> do <- 'x1 + x2 + x3'
>
>
> Is there any way to perform what the variable 'do'-describes
> (just like the formula-element but more elemental)?
>
>
>
> Perhaps my idea to solve my problem is a little bit strange.
>
>
> My general problem is, that I have to do arithmetics for which there seems to be no function available that I can apply in order to be more flexible.
>
>
> To be precise, I have to add up three dimensional arrays.
>
> I can do that like this (as someone suggested on this help-list – thanks for that!):
>
> (array[,,1] + array[,,2] + array[,,3]) / 3
>
>
> However in my case it can happen that at some point, I don't have to add 3 but 8 'array-slices'
> (or 10 or x).
>
> And I don't want to manually expand the above statement to:
>
> (array[,,1] + array[,,2] + array[,,3] + array[,,4] + array[,,5] + array[,,6] + array[,,7] + array[,,8]) / 8
>
> (ok, now I have done it ;)
>
>
>
> So, my thinking was that I can easily expand and change a string (with the paste-function / repeat-function etc.).
> But how can I expand a mathematical statement?
>
>
> thanks for any suggestions!
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