Renaming a datafile with a name stored in an object

Question

I have datafile named dat1 I want to rename it to dat2 which I have stored in the object filename.

dat1 <- c(1:5)
filename <- paste("dat2")

If I use,

filename <- dat1

Then the dat1 is renamed to filename and not to dat2.

So how do I rename dat1 with the name stored in the object filename i.e. without mentioning dat2?

I tried using file.rename and mv but unsuccessful.

Answer 1

We can use assign

assign(filename, dat1)
dat2
#[1] 1 2 3 4 5

and now rm the dat1

rm(dat1)

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Or another option is mv from gdata

library(gdata)
mv(from = 'dat1', to = filename)
dat2
#[1] 1 2 3 4 5

dat1

Error: object 'dat1' not found

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file.rename is used to rename a file name and not the objects in the global environment