How can I use my UDF input to name my output dataframe? [duplicate]

Question

I'm trying to use the assign() function to use one of my inputs as part of the dataframe returned by a UDF I created, but it doesn't work. There are no errors, but the dataframe created within the UDF is not stored in my global environment. My code is similar to as follows:

read_report <- function(id) {
  assign(paste0("extract_", id),
         read_excel(path = 
                      paste0(path, "_", id, ".xlsx"), 
                    sheet = 1
         )
  )
}

It works well enough outside the function, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. When I run read_report(1022) for example, I don't get a dataframe named extract_1022. I've also tried putting return(paste0("extract_",id)) at the end to no avail.

Any and all help appreciated! Thanks :)

Please read the comments in the linked post, this is a bad practice. — zx8754
– zx8754, Commented Jun 25, 2020 at 7:11

Ronak Shah · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-25 06:47:02Z

0

Specify the environment in assign because by default the object is created in the local environment of the function which cannot be accessed outside the function.

read_report <- function(id) {
    assign(paste0("extract_", id), 
        readxl::read_excel(path = paste0(path, "_", id, ".xlsx"), sheet = 1), 
        envir = .GlobalEnv)
}

answered Jun 25, 2020 at 6:47

Ronak Shah

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