Access variable value where the name of variable is stored in a string

r variables r-faq
Zhang18 picture Zhang18 · Oct 19, 2010 · Viewed 60.2k times · Source

Similar questions have been raised for other languages: C, sql, java, etc.

But I'm trying to do this in R.

I have:

ret_series <- c(1, 2, 3)
x <- "ret_series"

How do I get (1, 2, 3) by calling some function / manipulation on x, without direct mentioning of ret_series?

Answer

Joshua Ulrich picture Joshua Ulrich · Oct 19, 2010

You provided the answer in your question. Try get.

> get(x)
[1] 1 2 3

Related questions

Splitting a continuous variable into equal sized groups

I need to split/divide up a continuous variable into 3 equal sized groups. Example data frame: das <- data.frame(anim = 1:15, wt = c(181,179,180.5,201,201.5,245,246.4, 189.3,301,354,369,205,199,394,231.3)) After being cut up (according to the value of wt), I would need to have the 3 …

Read More
Getting strings recognized as variable names in R

Related: Strings as variable references in R Possibly related: Concatenate expressions to subset a dataframe I've simplified the question per the comment request. Here goes with some example data. dat <- data.frame(num=1:10,sq=(1:10)^2,cu=(1:10)^3) set1 <- …

Read More
Assign multiple new variables on LHS in a single line

I want to assign multiple variables in a single line in R. Is it possible to do something like this? values # initialize some vector of values (a, b) = values[c(2,4)] # assign a and b to values at 2 and 4 indices of …

Read More