Function which gives in output name of vector

Question

I'm searching this for a while and I can't find the answer. Is there some function which gives name of the vector ? It's very important to me to have such. Like in the example following.

 long_name<-c(1,2,3)
    vec_name<-function(vec){} 
    vec_name(long_name) 
    long_name

Have you tried `names(long_name)`? – Duck Aug 10 '20 at 12:50 — Duck, Aug 10 '20 at 12:50

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 10 '20 at 12:54

3

You could use match.call:

long_name <- c(1, 2, 3)

vec_name <- function(vec) as.character(as.list(match.call())[[2]])

vec_name(long_name) 
#> [1] "long_name"

^{Created on 2020-08-10 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)}

answered Aug 10 '20 at 12:54

Allan Cameron

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Kinda interesting, It's really working regardless to vector you put in. How would you do that without function ? It's non intuitive because I don't see that you used vec directly in a function – John Aug 10 '20 at 12:58
1

@John how do you mean "without function"? If you wanted you could do `as.character(quote(long_name))` – Allan Cameron Aug 10 '20 at 13:03

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 10 '20 at 12:56

3

What about substitute?

vec_name <- function(vec) {
  substitute(vec)
}

which gives

> vec_name(long_name)
long_name

answered Aug 10 '20 at 12:56

ThomasIsCoding

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This is simpler, +1, though why not just use `quote`, without needing to wrap in a function? – Allan Cameron Aug 10 '20 at 13:02
@AllanCameron Thanks, yours is great too, +1. It seems `quote` gives `vec` rather than `long_name` – ThomasIsCoding Aug 10 '20 at 13:10
I mean as in isn't `vec_name(long_name)` the same as `quote(long_name)`? – Allan Cameron Aug 10 '20 at 13:18
@AllanCameron Yes, they are the same – ThomasIsCoding Aug 10 '20 at 13:20

Function which gives in output name of vector

2 Answers2