What is the most useful R trick? [closed]

Answer 1

To perform an operation on a number of variables in a data frame. This is stolen from subset.data.frame.

get.vars<-function(vars,data){
    nl <- as.list(1L:ncol(data))
    names(nl) <- names(data)
    vars <- eval(substitute(vars), nl, parent.frame())
    data[,vars]
    #do stuff here
}

get.vars(c(cyl:hwy,class),mpg)