as.name and as.symbol are identical: they attempt to
coerce the argument to a name. is.symbol and the identical is.name return TRUE
or FALSE depending on whether the argument is a name or not.as.symbol(x)
is.symbol(x)as.name(x)
is.name(x)
as.name and as.symbol, an R object of type
"symbol" (see typeof). For is.name and is.symbol, a length-one logical vector
with value TRUE or FALSE.as.name first coerces its argument internally to a character
vector (so methods for as.character are not used). It then
takes the first element and provided it is not "", returns a
symbol of that name (and if the element is NA_character_, the
name is `NA`). as.name is implemented as as.vector(x, "symbol"),
and hence will dispatch methods for the generic function as.vector. is.name and is.symbol are primitive functions.call, is.language.
For the internal object mode, typeof. plotmath for another use of ‘symbol’.an <- as.name("arrg")
is.name(an) # TRUE
mode(an) # name
typeof(an) # symbol
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