Automatically using the object name as file name with write.table or write.csv

Question

Is there a way to have the object name become the file name character string when using write.table or write.csv?

In the following, a and b are vectors. I will be doing similar comparisons for many other pairs of vectors, and would like to not write out the object name as many times as I have been doing.

unique_downa<-a[!(a%in%b)]

write.csv(unique_downa,file="unique_downa.csv")

Or if anyone has a suggestion for a better way to do this whole process, I'd be happy to hear it.

Answer 1

The idiomatic approach is to use deparse(substitute(blah))

eg

 write.csv.named <- function(x, ...){
      fname <- sprintf('%s.csv',deparse(substitute(x)))
      write.csv(x=x, file =  fname, ...)
 }

Answer 2

It might be easiest to use the names of elements of a list instead of trying to use object names:

mycomparisons <-list (unique_downa = a[!(a%in%b)], unique_downb = b[!(b%in%a)])
mapply (write.csv, mycomparisons, paste (names (mycomparisons), ".csv", sep =""))

The best thing to do is probably put your vectors in a list, and then do the comparisons, the naming, and the writing out all inside the same loop, but that depends on how similar these similar comparisons are...