Many thanks to everyone who chimed in on this one. I really appreciate the
time you took to help me. Especially Dave W. who made me question what
exactly I was after.

Dan N.'s solution does exactly what I want, and it helped me learn about
the eval() and parse() functions too.

Thanks again, and all the best.

Mark Na


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:15 PM, Nordlund, Dan (DSHS/RDA) <
NordlDJ@dshs.wa.gov> wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: r-help-bounces@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces@r-
> > project.org] On Behalf Of mtb954@gmail.com
> > Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 2:27 PM
> > To: David Winsemius; r-help@r-project.org
> > Subject: Re: [R] How to convert a string to the column it represents in
> > a dataframe, with a reproducible example
> >
> > Hi David,
> >
> > I would like to have two objects, one containing the values in a column
> > and
> > the other containing the column's name.
> >
> > Of course, that's easy to do manually, but I don't want to have to type
> > out
> > the name of the column more than once (thus, below, I have typed it
> > once in
> > quotes, and I am trying to find a programatic way to create the other
> > object, without typing the column name again).
> >
> > Thank you for your help.
> >
> > Mark Na
> >
>
> Something like this
>
>     eval(parse(text=y))
>
> could be what you want. But even if it is, I am not sure it is what you
> should want.  Without more context, it is hard to say.
>
> Hope this is at least somewhat helpful,
>
> Dan
>
> Daniel J. Nordlund
> Washington State Department of Social and Health Services
> Planning, Performance, and Accountability
> Research and Data Analysis Division
> Olympia, WA 98504-5204
>
>
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

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