Message-ID: <Pine.A41.4.44.0308070843200.142036-100000@homer06.u.washington.edu>
Date: 2003-08-07T17:48:43Z
From: Thomas Lumley
Subject: backtick notation
In-Reply-To: <20030807143937.7D92EE4B8@sitemail.everyone.net>
On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>
> Could someone explain the thinking behind the backtick notation in
> r-devel?
>
> I think I understand that it can be used to refer to variable names
> which would otherwise not conform to R syntax; however, assign and
> as.name already allow you to do this. Is there more to it than that?
assign and as.name are fairly limited. For example, if you have a list or
data frame whose name is syntactically invalid it is quite difficult to
access or modify its columns.
-thomas
Thomas Lumley Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley@u.washington.edu University of Washington, Seattle