I could do that. However, the function f that I mentioned below is part of a bigger program and is nested inside another function, say function A. In function A I determine the covariates that I want to use and then call my function f. So even if I use a formula as single argument, I would still need to construct the formula with the arbitrary number of covariates which then leads to my original problem.
________________________________________ From: Erik Iverson [er...@ccbr.umn.edu] Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 12:00 PM To: Mendolia, Franco Cc: r-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] Arbitrary number of covariates in a formula Are you for some reason against writing your function to accept a single argument, a formula, that you simply pass on to coxph? Mendolia, Franco wrote: > Hello! > > I have something like this: > > test1 <- data.frame(intx=c(4,3,1,1,2,2,3), > status=c(1,1,1,0,1,1,0), > x1=c(0,2,1,1,1,0,0), > x2=c(1,1,0,0,2,2,0), > sex=c(0,0,0,0,1,1,1)) > > and I can easily fit a cox model: > > library(survival) > coxph(Surv(intx,status) ~ x1 + x2 + strata(sex),test1) > > However, I want to write my own function, fit the model inside this function > and then do some further computations. > > f <- function(time, event, stratum, covar ) > { > > fit <- coxph(Surv(time,event) ~ covar[[1]] + covar[[2]] + strata(stratum)) > fit > #... do some other stuff > } > > attach(test1) > f(intx, status, sex, list(x1,x2)) > > This works fine when I have exactly two covariates. However, I would like to > have something that I can use with an arbitrary number of covariates. More > precisely, I need something more general than covar[[1]] + covar[[2]]. > > Any ideas? > > Thanks, > Franco > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.