I am looking to make a function that takes a vector as input, does some simple arithmetic with the vector and call the new vector something which consists of a set string (say, "log.") plus the original vector name.
d = c(1 2, 3)
my.function <- function { x
x2 <- log(x)
...
I would like the function to return a vector called log.d (that is, not log.x or something set, but something dependent on the name of the vector input as x).
You can try next:
d = c(1, 2, 3)
my.function <- function(x){
x2 <- log(x)
arg_name <- deparse(substitute(x)) # Get argument name
var_name <- paste("log", arg_name, sep="_") # Construct the name
assign(var_name, x2, env=.GlobalEnv) # Assign values to variable
# variable will be created in .GlobalEnv
}
my.function(my.function(d)) doesn't return log.log.d as you might hope. This function doesn't play nicely with itself, let alone other functions like lapply.One way to do this would be to store separately names of all your input vector names and then pass them to assign function. Like assign takes text string for output object name, get looks up object from string.
I will assume your vectors all follow common pattern and start with "d", to make it all as dynamic as possible.
d1 <- c(1,2,3)
d2 <- c(2,3,4)
vec_names <- ls(pattern = "^d")
log_vec <- function(x){
log(x)
}
sapply(vec_names, function(x) assign(paste0("log.", x), log_vec(get(x)), envir = globalenv()))
This should create two new objects "log.d1" and "log.d2".
log.d <- yourfunction(d). Side effects like the one you want are evil and not necessary.