Getting a function name as a string

Question

Say I have a bunch of functions, each with something likeMyFunction.1, etc. I want to pass these functions into another function, which prints out a small report. Ideally I'd like to be able to label sections of a report by which function is being used to generate the results.

So are there any nice ways of getting the name of a predefined function as a string?

Answer 1

I was wanting the same thing, and remembered library(foo) didn't need quotes, this is what it does:

package <- as.character(substitute(package)) 

Answer 2

Another approach would be to pass the names of the functions into your report function, and then get the functions themselves with the get() command. For instance:

function.names <- c("which","all") fun1 <- get(function.names[1]) fun2 <- get(function.names[2]) 

Then you have the names in your original character vector, and the functions have new names as you defined them. In this case, the all function is now being called as fun2:

> fun2(c(TRUE, FALSE)) [1] FALSE 

Or, if you really want to keep the original function names, just assign them locally with the assign function:

assign(function.names[2], get(function.names[2])) 

If you run this command right now, you will end up with the all function in your ".GlobalEnv". You can see this with ls().