The following works nicely. Thank you. plot(z, sf[[s]], type="l") #where the dataframe name in my case is "sf"
Sorry - I meant to say there were 24 rows in each column, so z=1:24 Gregory A. Graves, Lead Scientist Everglades REstoration COoordination and VERification (RECOVER) Restoration Sciences Department South Florida Water Management District Phones: DESK: 561 / 682 - 2429 CELL: 561 / 719 - 8157 -----Original Message----- From: David Winsemius [mailto:dwinsem...@comcast.net] Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 11:50 AM To: Graves, Gregory Cc: r-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] reference text variables as column name to plot On Nov 30, 2010, at 11:40 AM, Graves, Gregory wrote: > Having given myself carpal tunnel looking for answer to this ... > > > > I have a dataset Named.... what? > each column of which has 12 rows in it. I created a > variable 'z' as follows: > > > > z=1:24 s Why did you put twice as many elements in z as there are in a column? > > > > Since I have a large number of these plots to make, and they are a bit > complex, I want to want to reference the column I want to plot via a > variable containing the name of that column. As follows: > > > > similar='1978' > > s=paste('Y',similar,sep='') > > > > variable s now contains 'Y1978' which is the name of one of the > columns. > > > > However, when I try to plot > > > > plot(z,s,type='l') Try this ... assuming that there really are 12 item length columns in a dataframe named, dfm. plot(1:12, dfm[[s]], type="l") dataframes are lists that can be accessed by the names of columns which are interpreted. Don't assume that you can get such interpretation with the $ operator. > > > > I get a 'x and y lengths differ' error because variable s is being > recognized as 'Y1978' length=1, rather than the contents of the column > Y1978 length=12. > > I tried all the usual tricks I know like &s. Huh? "&" is a logical operator. > How do you get R to > reference a variable as a column name? > > > > Thank you. > > > > Gregory A. Graves, Lead Scientist > > Everglades REstoration COoordination and VERification (RECOVER) > > Restoration Sciences Department > > South Florida Water Management District > > Phones: DESK: 561 / 682 - 2429 > > CELL: 561 / 719 - 8157 > > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > 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. David Winsemius, MD West Hartford, CT ______________________________________________ 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.