R help - Jul 2009 - Name of data.frame as a text string?

I've passed a data.frame as an input into a function which does some
plotting on a 4x4 matrix of certain parameters within in the
data.frame. I'd like to add a small header on top of each plot with
the name of the data.frame so that it's clear as I compare these 16
things where each on came from.

So far I haven't found the right way to get the name of the data.frame
as a string which I can use in something like mtext. Is there one? If
I put dummy text in, or take the time to pass in the name by hand,
then I do get titles just as I'd like, but I'd far rather let the name
of the data.frame speak for itself.

Thanks,
Mark

On 02-Jul-09 19:00:44, Mark Knecht wrote:
> I've passed a data.frame as an input into a function which does some
> plotting on a 4x4 matrix of certain parameters within in the
> data.frame. I'd like to add a small header on top of each plot with
> the name of the data.frame so that it's clear as I compare these 16
> things where each on came from.
> 
> So far I haven't found the right way to get the name of the data.frame
> as a string which I can use in something like mtext. Is there one? If
> I put dummy text in, or take the time to pass in the name by hand,
> then I do get titles just as I'd like, but I'd far rather let the
name
> of the data.frame speak for itself.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark
One way to do this (which is how I usually do it) is to set up the
dataframe name as a string variable, and then use this as required.

For instance:

  datafr <- "My1stDF"
  DF <- read.csv(paste(datafr,".csv",sep="")
  {<do things>}
  plot(whatever,main=paste("Data from", datafr),...)

which will read the CSV file whose name corresponds to what you have
set 'datafr' to, and then put a corresponding header into the plot.

This is a particularly useful technique if you want to loop through
several datasets, on the lines of

  DataFrs <- c("My1stDF", "My2ndDFD",
"My3rdDF", "My4thDF")
  for( datafr in DataFrs ) {
    {<stuff like the above>}
  }

Several variants of this kind of approach are possible!

Hoping this helps,
Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 02-Jul-09                                       Time: 20:21:43
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

Use
   deparse(substitute(df))

Example from ?deparse:

     function(x, y) {
          plot(x, y, xlab=deparse(substitute(x)),
              ylab=deparse(substitute(y)))
      }

-Don

At 12:00 PM -0700 7/2/09, Mark Knecht wrote:
>I've passed a data.frame as an input into a function which does some
>plotting on a 4x4 matrix of certain parameters within in the
>data.frame. I'd like to add a small header on top of each plot with
>the name of the data.frame so that it's clear as I compare these 16
>things where each on came from.
>
>So far I haven't found the right way to get the name of the data.frame
>as a string which I can use in something like mtext. Is there one? If
>I put dummy text in, or take the time to pass in the name by hand,
>then I do get titles just as I'd like, but I'd far rather let the
name
>of the data.frame speak for itself.
>
>Thanks,
>Mark
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>https://*stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://*www.*R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

-- 
--------------------------------------
Don MacQueen
Environmental Protection Department
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA, USA
925-423-1062

Perfect! Thanks!

Cheers,
Mark

On 7/2/09, Phil Spector <spector at stat.berkeley.edu>
wrote:
> Mark -
>    Take a look at the help file for substitute.
>  For example:
>
>
> > zz = function(x)print(substitute(x))
> > zz(variablename)
> >
>  variablename
>
>                                         - Phil
>
>
>
>  On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>
> >
> > I've passed a data.frame as an input into a function which does
some
> > plotting on a 4x4 matrix of certain parameters within in the
> > data.frame. I'd like to add a small header on top of each plot
with
> > the name of the data.frame so that it's clear as I compare these
16
> > things where each on came from.
> >
> > So far I haven't found the right way to get the name of the
data.frame
> > as a string which I can use in something like mtext. Is there one? If
> > I put dummy text in, or take the time to pass in the name by hand,
> > then I do get titles just as I'd like, but I'd far rather let
the name
> > of the data.frame speak for itself.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Mark
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
> >
>

On 7/2/09, Don MacQueen <macq at llnl.gov> wrote:
> Use
>   deparse(substitute(df))
>
>  Example from ?deparse:
>
>     function(x, y) {
>          plot(x, y, xlab=deparse(substitute(x)),
>              ylab=deparse(substitute(y)))
>      }
>
>  -Don
>
Now that's interesting... deparsed means ?? de-analyze ?? I'm not
clear what that's doing for me beyond using only substitute but your
example and the substitute example both use it so I suppose I
shouldn't tempt the Fates...

Thanks,
Mark