CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rfunction
alittleboy
alittleboy

Reputation: 10956

data name as an argument passed in a function in R

I built an R package and include a dataset called mouse where I can access it using data(mouse). In the package, I also have a function called fun which takes, as its first argument, the name of a dataset (included in the package):

fun = function(dt = NULL, ...) {
    data(dt)
    ...
    dt.sub = dt[ ,1:6]
    ...
}

However, when I use the function as fun(dt = "mouse"), it says In data(dt) : data set ‘dt’ not found. Also, I cannot use dt[ ,1:6] since dt here is a string. I tried to use noquote and as.name functions to get rid of the quotation marks, but the object dt does NOT refer to the mouse dataset.

My question is, what's the best approach to pass the name of a dataset (mouse in this case) in the function argument, and then use it in the function body? Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 110

Answers (1)

kohske
kohske

Reputation: 66842

Try this:

f <- function(dt = NULL) {
  do.call("data", list(dt))
  dt <- eval(as.name(dt))
  head(dt)
}

Upvotes: 1

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