R: how to assign column name to a variable and using it in function

Question

I have a dataframe called test1 with some data, for example:

    name  address
1   xxx1    x
2   xxx2    y
3   xxx3    z

I have some code

new.function = function(dataframe, colname){
   print(dataframe$colname[1])
}

#call function
new.function(test1, "name1")

I want it print out xxx1 because the function does the same as test1$name[1] but it failed. I just thinking about how to assign a column name to a variable so that it can be used in function more flexiable.

Answer 1

If you only want to assign the column name to a variable you can do :

variable <-names(test1)[1]

To print xx1 :

print((test1$name)[1])

You should take a look at dplyr to handle table easily