Can you turn a string into a (working) symbol?

Yes, the assign command goes a little way toward what what I was hoping for. 
But it requires a different syntax, and it does not in general let you use
quoted expressions that you could  use with other assignment operators. For
instance,

DD <- 1:3
assign("DD[2]", 5)
DD

[1] 1 2 3

So I am still looking for a function that produces an output that is fully
equivalent to the string without quotation marks.  Or for a definite
statement that no such function can exist.

Thanks so much for your attention to this problem.
andrewH




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