name
.
Name objects are primarily used in the parsed form of expressions to represent
names typed by the user.
as.name(x) is.name(x) as.symbol(x) is.symbol(x)
as.name
coerces
x
to an object of mode
"name"
.
This is useful when
x
is of mode
"character"
.
is.name
tests whether
x
is a name object.
That is, it returns
TRUE
if
x
is a name and
FALSE
otherwise.
Both of these functions are generic; currently there are no methods defined for either of them.
The use of the word "name" here is different than in the names
of a list or vector - see
names
for this sense.
The functions
is.symbol
and
as.symbol
are identical to
is.name
and
as.name
, respectively:
they are present for compatibility with R.
mode(eval(as.name("ls"))) # returns "function"