Can I escape characters in variable names?

Question

Sometimes it would be useful to name variables like no programmer should name his or her variables. Of course there\'s some good reason for conventions and limitations on st

Answer 1

You can use backticks:

R> `a + b` <- 3
R> `a + b`
[1] 3

tmp <- data.frame(1:10, rnorm(10))
names(tmp) <- c("a+b", "c&d")
ggplot(tmp, aes(`a+b`, `c&d`)) + geom_point()

See also ?Quotes.