as_label()
transforms R objects into a short, human-readable
description. You can use labels to:
Display an object in a concise way, for example to labellise axes
in a graphical plot.
Give default names to columns in a data frame. In this case,
labelling is the first step before name repair.
See also as_name()
for transforming symbols back to a
string. Unlike as_label()
, as_name()
is a well defined
operation that guarantees the roundtrip symbol -> string ->
symbol.
In general, if you don't know for sure what kind of object you're
dealing with (a call, a symbol, an unquoted constant), use
as_label()
and make no assumption about the resulting string. If
you know you have a symbol and need the name of the object it
refers to, use as_name()
. For instance, use as_label()
with
objects captured with enquo()
and as_name()
with symbols
captured with ensym()
.