R help - Nov 2007 - Shortcut to refer to an attached dataframe?

When I attach data frames I often want to be able to refer to the whole
data frame rather then one of its components. For example:

 

attach (my.data.frame)

summary(my.data.frame)

 

That's fine but often the frame has a very long name so I'd prefer some
shorthand way of referring to it by its position on the search list.
This applies especially to cases where I have a nested data frame so I
might do 

 

attach(my.data.frame$mycomponent)

summary(my.data.frame$mycomponent)

 

 I have a recollection that there was a way of doing this with S-Plus
but I haven't been able to figure out how to do it in R (I have looked
at attach, get, sys.frame, etc. to no avail). 

 

Is there a built-in way of doing this? Thanks. 

 

 Jeff

 


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Here is one possibility:
> gets <- function(pos) get(search()[pos])
> attach(iris)
> summary(gets(2))
  Sepal.Length    Sepal.Width     Petal.Length    Petal.Width
 Min.   :4.300   Min.   :2.000   Min.   :1.000   Min.   :0.100
 1st Qu.:5.100   1st Qu.:2.800   1st Qu.:1.600   1st Qu.:0.300
 Median :5.800   Median :3.000   Median :4.350   Median :1.300
 Mean   :5.843   Mean   :3.057   Mean   :3.758   Mean   :1.199
 3rd Qu.:6.400   3rd Qu.:3.300   3rd Qu.:5.100   3rd Qu.:1.800
 Max.   :7.900   Max.   :4.400   Max.   :6.900   Max.   :2.500
       Species
 setosa    :50
 versicolor:50
 virginica :50




On Nov 7, 2007 2:27 PM, Jeff Marcus <Jeffrey.Marcus at nuance.com>
wrote:
> When I attach data frames I often want to be able to refer to the whole
> data frame rather then one of its components. For example:
>
>
>
> attach (my.data.frame)
>
> summary(my.data.frame)
>
>
>
> That's fine but often the frame has a very long name so I'd prefer
some
> shorthand way of referring to it by its position on the search list.
> This applies especially to cases where I have a nested data frame so I
> might do
>
>
>
> attach(my.data.frame$mycomponent)
>
> summary(my.data.frame$mycomponent)
>
>
>
>  I have a recollection that there was a way of doing this with S-Plus
> but I haven't been able to figure out how to do it in R (I have looked
> at attach, get, sys.frame, etc. to no avail).
>
>
>
> Is there a built-in way of doing this? Thanks.
>
>
>
>  Jeff
>
>
>
>
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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