Subset with selection variable from function argument. Is there another way?

Dear list,

I'm making my current code more generic and would like some advise.
The basic problem is subset and the name of the column to be compared
for selection.

What I've come up with is 

data(mammals)
set <- bottompremolars"
The line above is
  a) syntactically incorrect and
  b) the string does not describe a variable in the mammals data
hence this is not reproducible at all.
subset(mammals, eval(parse(file="",text=set)) > 2)

Let's assume
   set <- "body"

Either use get() as in
   subset(mammals, get(set) > 2)
or simple indexing such as:
   subset(mammals, mammals[[set]] > 2)

Uwe Ligges
This seems a bit odd.  Is there a nicer way?

/Fredrik

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Subset with selection variable from function argument. Is there another way?

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