[gov2001-l] An R Question for Code Flexibility

Hi Everyone- I hope all your papers are going well. I am trying to write an R function that will produce a fairly complicated graph by taking in, amongst other things, a variable name and then at one point use setx in Zelig to produce a number of values. In setx the argument name is actually the variable name, and here is where I run into trouble. I can't seem to take an argument into my function and have it come out as an argument in another function. So for example imagine this reduced example: myfunction <- function(var) { result <- setx(modelobj, data=data, var =seq(from=xrange[1], to=xrange[2], length.out=100)) } You can see that I set the key piece of code out here. Its not the variable itself I need there but the name of the variable. I have tried a character string, assign(), paste(), substitute() and attribute(). For those that know Stata this would be fairly easily solved by calling a local (in this case the local is created automatically and you just write `var'). R is not a macro language though, so I assume there is a better way I just haven't found yet. Any thoughts? Brandon