R: Rename or copy dataframe and naming it as defined in a vector

Question

I want to create a new dataframe from an existing one and naming it as defined in a vector:

I have a dataset with many different questions, and to go through the dataset a bit quicker, I have developed a list of generic functions that can be called upon. For each question, I define the specific values, such as can be seen below. In the second part, I more or less create a clean dataset for the question, which is saved as a dataframe called 'questionid'. Because that variable is overwritten with each question, I want to create a duplicate of this dataframe and call it as specified under 'questionname' (in this case "A1"). I find it very difficult to find easy ways to do that. I hope someone can help me.

# Specify vectors and variables
  question <- "Would you recommend edX to a friend of you?" 
  questionname <- "A1" 
  edXid <- "i4x-DelftX-ET3034TUx-problem-b3d30df864ca41ffa0170e790f01a783_2_1" 
  clevels <- c("0 - Not at all likely", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5 - Neutral", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10 - Extremely likely") 
  csvname <- paste(questionname, ".csv", sep="") 
  pngname <- paste(questionname, ".png", sep="") 

# Run code
  questionid <- subset(allDatasolar, allDatasolar[,3]==edXid, select = -c(X,question))
  questionid <- questionid[-grep("dummy", questionid$answer), ] 
  questionid <- droplevels(questionid) 
  # as.name(questionname) <- as.data.frame(questionid) # does not work
  questionid$answer <- factor(questionid$answer, ordered=TRUE, levels=clevels) 
  write.csv(data.frame(summary(questionid$answer)), file = csvname) 
  png(file = pngname, width = 640) 
  barchart(questionid$answer, main = question, xlab = "", col='lightblue')
  dev.off() 

Answer 1

You're looking for assign

>question = "What do you need?" 
>questionname = "A1" 
>  
>questionid = data.frame(question, x="minimal working example")
>
>assign(questionname, questionid)
>
>A1

           question                       x
1 What do you need? minimal working example

Assign takes a string (or a character variable, in this case) as the first argument and makes an object with that name that is a copy of whatever is in the second argument. In this case, you can feel free to keep over-writing the questionid data frame, but you will be making copies along the way based on your "questionname" variable value.