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.
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.