Not sure the replies you received make it clear, but the key point is that functions are first class objects in R like any other objects (vectors, lists, data frames) and can be assigned, collected into structures, indexed, etc. in the usual way. Further, if the value of any R expression is a function object, it can be called in the usual way on an argument list by:
Some R_Expression(comma separated argument list) e.g. > {y <-function(x) sin(x)+10} (pi/2) ## pi is a known named constant in R 11 Your initial confusion below actually has nothing to do with this: you have confused unquoted names of objects in R with quoted character strings. So, e.g. x <- 1:10 assigns a sequence of numeric values to the name x, which essentially points to where those values are stored in memory. typing >x at the command line would print the values (by default) typing >"x" prints the character string "x" -- Bert On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Muhammad Rahiz <muhammad.ra...@ouce.ox.ac.uk> wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm trying to get the min and max of a sequence of number using a loop like > the folllowing. Can anyone point me to why it doesn't work. > > Thanks. > > type <- c("min","max") > n <- 1:10 > for (a in 1:2) { > print(type[a](n)) } > > > -- > Muhammad > > ______________________________________________ > 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. -- Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics Internal Contact Info: Phone: 467-7374 Website: http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm ______________________________________________ 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.