[R] Converting a character string into a data frame name and performing assignments to that data frame

[Kavitha Venkatesan]

Hi,
I'd greatly appreciate any insight into the problem in my previous
message below: Please note that I would like to loop through the
following steps for a list of data frames whose names are dynamically
assigned at run time, so I have a character string variable, called
"variable.df", which stores the name of the data frame at any given
point ...and I need to be able to manipulate the contents of the data
frame somehow using this character string :

> colnames(variable.df) = colnames(some.other.df)
> variable.df = rbind(variable.df, some.other.df)
> write.table(variable.df, file=some.file)

Thanks!
Kavitha

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Kavitha Venkatesan
<kavitha.venkatesan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to do the following operations:
>
> variable.df is a character string that contains the name of the data
> frame that I want to do the following operations on:
>
> variable.df <- data.frame();
> # I can do the above command using
> assign( variable.df, data.frame() )
>
> How can I perform the assignment statements below ?
>
> colnames(variable.df) = colnames(some.other.df)
> variable.df = rbind(variable.df, some.other.df)
> write.table(variable.df, file=some.file)
>
> Doing
> eval(  substitute( colnames(var), list(var=as.name(variable.df) ) ) )
>  didn't get me all the way there.
>
> Thanks!
> Kavitha
>