How to use indirect reference to read contents into a data table in R.

Question

How do you use indirect references in R? More specifically, in the following simple read statement, I would like to be able to use a variable name to read inputFile into data table myTable.

myTable <- read.csv(inputFile, sep=",", header=T)

Instead of the above, I want to define

refToMyTable <- "myTable"

Then, how can I use refToMyTable instead of myTable to read inputFile into myTable?

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

R doesn't really have references like that, but you can use strings to retrieve/create variables of that name.

But first let me say this is generally not a good practice. If you're looking to do this type of thing, it's generally a sign that you're not doing it "the R way.'

Nevertheless

assign(refToMyTable, read.csv(inputFile, sep=",", header=T))

Should to the trick. And the complement to assign is get to retrieve a variable's value using it's name.