CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rindirect-objects
kkgg
kkgg

Reputation: 3

How to use indirect reference to read contents into a data table in R.

How do you use indirect references in R? More specifically, in the following simple read statement, I would like to be able to use a variable name to read inputFile into data table myTable.

myTable <- read.csv(inputFile, sep=",", header=T)

Instead of the above, I want to define

refToMyTable <- "myTable"

Then, how can I use refToMyTable instead of myTable to read inputFile into myTable?

Thanks for the help.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3651

Answers (3)

IRTFM
IRTFM

Reputation: 263411

Perhaps assign as mentioned by MrFlick.

When you want the contents of the object named "myTable" you would use get:

 get("myTable")
 get(refToMyTable)   # since get will evaluate its argument

(It would be better to assign results of multiple such dataframes to a ist object or a Reference Class.)

If you wanted a language-name object you would use as.name:

as.name("myTable")
 # myTable    .... is printed at the console; note no quotes
str(as.name("myTable"))
 #symbol myTable

Upvotes: 1

MrFlick
MrFlick

Reputation: 206401

R doesn't really have references like that, but you can use strings to retrieve/create variables of that name.

But first let me say this is generally not a good practice. If you're looking to do this type of thing, it's generally a sign that you're not doing it "the R way.'

Nevertheless

assign(refToMyTable, read.csv(inputFile, sep=",", header=T))

Should to the trick. And the complement to assign is get to retrieve a variable's value using it's name.

Upvotes: 1

Will Gibson
Will Gibson

Reputation: 47

I think you mean something like the following:

reftomytable='~/Documents/myfile.csv'
myTable=read.csv(reftomytable)

Upvotes: 0

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