One idea is to keep the variable names you want in a vector, say 'use' and
and get the indices using the match function:

match(use, names(df)

where use <- c("item1","item2",...)

You can then subset the data frame as follows:

newdf <- df[, match(use, names(df)]

HTH,

Roger


On 1/20/06, Chuck Cleland <ccleland@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> ?subset
>
> subset(dframe, select=c("name1", "name2", "name3"))
>
> Michael Reinecke wrote:
> > Hi! I suspect there must be an easy way to access components of a data
> frame by name, i.e. the input should look like "name1 name2 name3 ..." and
> the output be a data frame of those components with the corresponding names.
> I ´ve been trying for hours, but only found the long way to do it (which is
> not feasible, since I have lots of components to select):
> >
> >
> >
> > dframe[names(dframe)=="name1" | dframe=="name2" | dframe=="name3"]
> >
> >
> >
> > Do you know a shortcut?
> >
> >
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
> >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > ______________________________________________
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>
> --
> Chuck Cleland, Ph.D.
> NDRI, Inc.
> 71 West 23rd Street, 8th floor
> New York, NY 10010
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>
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>

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