I received two answers to my inquiry: (1) as.character(substitute(list(...)))[-1] (due to Thomas Lumley) (2) as.character(match.call(expand.dots = FALSE)$"...") (due to Deepayan Sarkar) Both seem to do exactly what I want. Thanks. cheers, Rolf Turner rolf at math.unb.ca -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._