R help - Jan 2012 - Determining if an object name does not exist

Is there a way to tell whether an object name 1. is valid 2. is not going to
cause a collision with an existing object by the same name?

Thanks.

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On 12-01-14 5:47 AM, Ajay Askoolum wrote:
> Is there a way to tell whether an object name 1. is valid 2. is not going
to cause a collision with an existing object by the same name?
For 1, you could put your names in a character vector x, then check 
whether x and make.names(x) are identical; if so, x contains 
syntactically valid names.  (Do remember that almost anything can be a 
name if you put it in back quotes.)

For 2, you could check exists(x) to find if objects with those names exist.

Duncan Murdoch