Hello Jonathan, You can use eval() and parse(), although there may be better ways of getting to your end goal (assuming you have not inherited a series of character strings held in objects that should be run as commands). At any rate, this works:
a <- 3 b <- 2 operator <- "-" statement_string <- paste(a, operator, b, sep="") eval(parse(text = statement_string)) Best regards, Josh On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Jonathan Greenberg <greenb...@ucdavis.edu> wrote: > Rhelpers: > > How do I get R to evaluate a string, as if it was an R statement, e.g.: > > a=3 > b=2 > operator="-" > statement_string=paste(a,operator,b,sep="") > > --j > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Joshua Wiley Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology University of California, Los Angeles http://www.joshuawiley.com/ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.