I am trying to load a dataset into R using the data() function. It works fine when I use the dataset name (e.g. data(Titanic)
or data("Titanic")
). What doesn't work for me is loading a dataset using a variable instead of its name. For example:
# This works fine:
> data(Titanic)
# This works fine as well:
> data("Titanic")
# This doesn't work:
> myvar <- Titanic
> data(myvar)
**Warning message:
In data(myvar) : data set ‘myvar’ not found**
Why is R looking for a dataset named "myvar" since it is not quoted? And since this is the default behavior, isn't there a way to load a dataset stored in a variable?
For the record, what I am trying to do is to create a function that uses the "arules" package and mines association rules using Apriori. Thus, I need to pass the dataset as a parameter to that function.
myfun <- function(mydataset) {
data(mydataset) # doesn't work (data set 'mydataset' not found)
rules <- apriori(mydataset)
}
edit - output of sessionInfo():
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.0.0 (2013-04-03)
Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252 LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
other attached packages:
[1] arules_1.0-14 Matrix_1.0-12 lattice_0.20-15 RPostgreSQL_0.4 DBI_0.2-7
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] grid_3.0.0 tools_3.0.0
And the actual errors I am getting (using, for example, a sample dataset "xyz"):
xyz <- data.frame(c(1,2,3))
data(list=xyz)
Warning messages:
1: In grep(name, files, fixed = TRUE) :
argument 'pattern' has length > 1 and only the first element will be used
2: In grep(name, files, fixed = TRUE) :
argument 'pattern' has length > 1 and only the first element will be used
3: In if (name %in% names(rds)) { :
the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be used
4: In grep(name, files, fixed = TRUE) :
argument 'pattern' has length > 1 and only the first element will be used
5: In if (name %in% names(rds)) { :
the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be used
6: In grep(name, files, fixed = TRUE) :
argument 'pattern' has length > 1 and only the first element will be used
...
...
32: In data(list = xyz) :
c("data set ‘1’ not found", "data set ‘2’ not found", "data set ‘3’ not found")