R: Assign dataframe columns to variable within function

Question

I would like to be able temporarily assign the columns of a data.frame to variable names within a function.

mydata <- data.frame(a1="hello",a2=2,a3=3) 

f <- function(mydata) {
   for (i in names(mydata)) assign(i, tempdata[i])
   print(a1)
   print(a2+a3)
}

[1] "hello"
[2] 5

Thanks, I know this is another weird question but it would be helpful.

Answer 1

I hesitate to post this, but your comment wasn't particularly helpful in explaining what you are trying to achieve, and this seems to match the functionality of your f function in your question.

The with function will let you refer to column names as if they were variables:

with(mydata, {
  print(a1)
  print(a2 + a3)
})
# [1] hello
# Levels: hello
# [1] 5