Assign value to concatenated variable (in R)-CodePudding

I am trying to assign a value to a concatenated variable name. This is an example of how it's done:

for(sector in 1:4) {
  for(letter in 1:2) {
    if (letter == 1) {
      letter = 'V'
    }
    else if (letter == 2) {
      letter = 'A'
    }
    
    print(paste(toString(sector), letter, "_variable", sep = ""))
    
    paste(toString(sector), letter, "_variable", sep = "") <- sector
  }
}

Basically what the outcome has to be: 8 variables (1V_variable, 1A_variable, 2V_variable, ...) with as value the sector (= number).

But I am getting the following error:

could not find function "paste<-"

Do you know any solution to solve this? Thanks in advance!

CodePudding user response：

I think you are looking for assign -

for(sector in 1:4) {
  for(letter in 1:2) {
    if (letter == 1) {
      letter = 'V'
    }
    else if (letter == 2) {
      letter = 'A'
    }
    print(paste(toString(sector), letter, "_variable", sep = ""))
    assign(paste(toString(sector), letter, "_variable", sep = ""), sector)
  }
}

You need to use variable names with backticks to access them since it starts with a number.

`1V_variable`
#[1] 1
`1A_variable`
#[1] 1

A side note - It is not considered a good practice to create so many variables in global envoirnment try to use lists instead.

CodePudding user response：

Try this in the middle of your loop.

newvarname = paste(toString(sector), letter, "_variable", sep = "")
eval(parse(text = paste0(newvarname, " = sector")))