Others answered your question.  I would however suggest that you asked the 
wrong question.

If you really feel the need for your future self to serve some serious penance 
for past or near future misdeeds, then continuing with this strategy is one way 
to do that (just please don't inflict your suffering on us when this ends up 
causing more problems than it solves).

If on the other hand, you want to avoid future headaches and become a better 
programmer, then learn to use lists rather than global variables.

a <- list()
for( i in 1:5 ) {
 a[[ paste('a',i,sep="") ]] <- 1:i
        ### or simpler a[[i]] <- 1:i
}

If you use the simpler version, then you could still get the names by:
names(a) <- paste('a', 1:5, sep="")

Then

a[[2]] <- 4
a[['a2']] <- 4
a$a2 <- 4
a <- within(a, a2<-4)

will all do the substitutions.

See the help for the within and with functions as well as fortune(236) and the 
last few lines of FAQ 7.21.


-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.s...@imail.org
801.408.8111


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Joseph Lee
> Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 10:14 PM
> To: r-help@r-project.org
> Subject: [R] somebody help me about this error message...
> 
> 
> I created variables automatically like this way
> 
> for(i in 1:5){
>       nam <- paste("a",i,sep="")
>       assign(nam,1:i)
> }
> 
> and then, i want to insert a new data into "a2" variable. so, i did
> next
> sentence
> 
> paste("a",2,sep="") <- 4
> 
> so, i got this error message
> 
> Error in get(paste("a", 2, sep = ""))[1] <- 4 :
>   target of assignment expands to non-language object
> 
> anyone knows abou this error message and tell me how to solve thie
> problem,
> please......
> --
> View this message in context: http://n4.nabble.com/somebody-help-me-
> about-this-error-message-tp1571700p1571700.html
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 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.

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