Hi, I am writing a .R script to plot some data from a file, all info given from command line. For example: Rscript Rtest.R sas_summary.csv sas_score_pre sas_score_post ...will try to plot columns of data "sas_score_pre" and "sas_score_post" from the file "sas_summary.csv". I can extract these using : args <- commandArgs(TRUE) data<-data.frame(read.csv(args[1])) attach(data) pre <- args[2] post <- args[3] I then want to do some arithmetic on the columns for plotting: dat=data.frame(pre,post) dat$diff <- dat$pre - dat$post dat$mean <- ( dat$pre + dat$post)/2 the problem is they are of class "character": pre post class(pre) class(post) ...gives [1] "sas_score_pre" [1] "character" [1] "myo_score_post" [1] "character" So then the following code: dat=data.frame(pre,post) dat dat$diff <- dat$pre - dat$post ...gives the error: pre post 1 sas_stress_score myo_isch_score Warning message: In Ops.factor(dat$pre, dat$post) : - not meaningful for factors Warning message: In Ops.factor(dat$pre, dat$post) : + not meaningful for factors Error: Discrete value supplied to continuous scale Execution halted How can I make the data frame read the column headers from the input and associate it with the columns in "data"? Hope this makes some sense?!? thanks Scott -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/data-frame-and-commandArgs-problem-tp4646326.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.