[R] eval and as.name

[Wacek Kusnierczyk]

Fuchs Ira wrote:
> I'm sure there is a more general way to ask this question but how do
> you use the elements of a character vector as names of objects in an
> expression?
> For example, say you have:
>
> a = c(1,3,5,7)
> b = c(2,4,6,8)
>
> n=c("a","b")
>
> and you want to use the names a and b in a function (e.g. sum)
>
> sum(eval(as.name(n[1])),eval(as.name(n[2])))
>
> works but
>
> what is a simpler way to effect this level of indirection?
>

in this particular case, the simplest i can come up with is:

sum(sapply(n, get))

you may want to avoid this sort of indirection by using lists with named
components:

d = list(a=c(1,3,5,7), b=c(2,4,6,8))
sum(unlist(d))
with(d, sum(a+b))
sum(d[['a']], d[['b']])
sum(sapply(n, function(v) d[[v]]))

and so on.

vQ