Computing on the Language

27 Oct 2011

And now for something a bit more esoteric….

I recently wrote a function to deal with a strange problem. Writing the function ended up being a fun challenge related to computing on the R language itself.

Here’s the problem: Write a function that takes any number of R objects as arguments and returns a list whose names are derived from the names of the R objects.

Perhaps an example provides a better description. Suppose the function is called ‘makeList’. Then 

x <- 1
y <- 2
z <- "hello"
makeList(x, y, z)

returns

list(x = 1, y = 2, z = "hello")

It originally seemed straightforward to me, but it turned out to be very much not straightforward. 

Note that a function like this is probably most useful during interactive sessions, as opposed to programming.

I challenge you to take a whirl at writing the function, you know, in all that spare time you have. I’ll provide my solution in a future post.