Create Variable Name Using paste() Function in R (Example)
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a new variable using the paste() function in the R programming language.
The table of content is structured as follows:
With that, let’s take a look at some R codes in action!
Example: Create Variable Name with paste0() & assign() Functions
This Example explains how to apply the paste0 and assign functions to define a new variable in R.
assign(paste0("variable_", 1), 1:5) # Using assign function
Let’s have a look at the output:
variable_1 # Return new variable to console # 1 2 3 4 5
As you can see based on the previous output of the RStudio console, we have created a new vector object called variable_1.
Video, Further Resources & Summary
Would you like to learn more about pasting variable names? Then you could watch the following video of my YouTube channel. In the video, I illustrate the R programming syntax of this tutorial.
In addition, you could read the related posts of this homepage. I have published several tutorials already.
- Get Column Index in Data Frame by Variable Name
- Convert Character String to Variable Name
- Useful Functions in R
- R Programming Examples
Summary: At this point you should have learned how to apply the paste function to create a new variable name in R. Please let me know in the comments, in case you have further questions.
I’m Joachim Schork. On this website, I provide statistics tutorials as well as code in Python and R programming.
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4 Comments. Leave new
Thanks Joachim but I can’t follow what “assign” and “paste0” are doing.
To me its just a magic box that spits out a reply.
Hi Jeff,
Please have a look at the following two tutorials. They explain those two functions in some more detail:
https://statisticsglobe.com/assign-function-in-r
https://statisticsglobe.com/r-paste-paste0-function-example
Regards,
Joachim
Hi Joachim,
I’ve created a series of data frames based off of 2 sets of 3 different parameters for a monte carlo simulation i.e. rho = (1,2,3) variance = (4,5,6). I’ve dynamically named my 9 different dataframes using a double for loop and assign(paste()). I’m having trouble appending the dataframes outside my loop. I can see that they exist in my global environment, and can call them in the console whether they appear with a ` on either side, however I can’t seem to rbind them, for example, rbind(paste(“df”,rho, variance, sep=””) to bring them back into one dataframe. I’ve read around and it looks like assign creates this problem. Any advice?
Hey Steven,
Please excuse the delayed response. I was on a long holiday, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to reply sooner. Still need help with your code?
Regards,
Joachim