In R, how to get an object's name after it is sent to a function?

Question

I am looking for the reverse of get().

Given an object name, I wish to have the character string representing that object extracted directly from the ob

Answer 1

Note that for print methods the behavior can be different.

print.foo=function(x){ print(deparse(substitute(x))) }
test = list(a=1, b=2)
class(test)="foo"
#this shows "test" as expected
print(test)

#this (just typing 'test' on the R command line)
test
#shows
#"structure(list(a = 1, b = 2), .Names = c(\"a\", \"b\"), class = \"foo\")"

Other comments I've seen on forums suggests that the last behavior is unavoidable. This is unfortunate if you are writing print methods for packages.