Thanks to several kind people, I understand how to use deparse(substitute(paramter)) to get as text strings the arguments passed to an R function. What I still can't do is put the text strings recovered by deparse(substitute(parameter)) back together to get the columns of a dataframe passed to the function. What I want to do is pass a column name to a function along with the name of the dataframe and then, within the function access the column of the dataframe.
I want the function below to print the columns of the dataframe testdata, i.e. testdata[,"FSG"] and testdata[,"GCM"]. I have tried several ways to tell the function to print the columns; none of them work. I thank everyone who has helped in the past, and those people who will help me now! John testdata <- structure(list(FSG = c(271L, 288L, 269L, 297L, 311L, 217L, 235L, 172L, 201L, 162L), CGM = c(205L, 273L, 226L, 235L, 311L, 201L, 203L, 155L, 182L, 163L)), row.names = c(NA, 10L), class = "data.frame") cat("This is the data frame") class(testdata) testdata BAPlot <- function(first,second,indata){ # these lines of code work col1 <- deparse(substitute(first)) col2 <- deparse(substitute(second)) thedata <- deparse(substitute(third)) print(col1) print(col2) print(thedata) cat("This gets the data, but not as a dataframe\n") zoop<-paste(indata) print(zoop) cat("End This gets the data, but not as a dataframe\n") # these lines do not work print(indata[,first]) print(indata[,"first"]) print(thedata[,col1]) paste(zoop[,paste(first)]) paste(zoop[,first]) zap<-paste(first) print(zap) } [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.