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I have large number of dataframes. These dataframes are named generally as testing_someName_coo , testing_someName_csr, and testing_someName_hyb. Here someName represents just different names. There are approximately 50 names.

The contents of these files are as follows

V1     V2
Alice  some value  
Bob    some value
 .
 .
Ross   some value

the second and third data frames also consists of records in the same format. The first column V1 is the same in all the three dataframes. I initially wanted to rename the columns in all the three dataframes and combine them on the basis of first column. Hence I wrote the following code:

colnames(testing_someName_coo) <- c("name", "coo")
colnames(testing_someName_csr) <- c("name", "csr")
colnames(testing_someName_dia) <- c("name", "dia")
temp1 <- merge(testing_someName_coo,testing_someName_csr,by= "name")
temp1 <- merge(temp1,testing_someName_hyb,by= "name")

This works fine, But since I have large number of dataset I thought I will write a function to which will pass someName as a parameter and perform the above functionality. So I wrote the following code:

mergetiming <- function(name){
colnames(as.name(paste("testing",name,"coo",sep= "_"))) <- c("name", "coo")
colnames(as.name(paste("testing",name,"csr",sep= "_"))) <- c("name", "csr")
colnames(as.name(paste("testing",name,"dia",sep= "_")) <- c("name",   "dia")
//merge commannd here as before but using as.name(paste("testing",name,"dia",sep= "_")
}

But then I receive an error 

Error in colnames(as.name(paste("testing", name, "coo", sep = "_"))) <- c("name",  : 
 target of assignment expands to non-language object

What would be the best way of doing this without doing this manually.

Stormvirux
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    Use a [list of data frames](http://stackoverflow.com/a/24376207/903061). – Gregor Thomas Oct 25 '16 at 17:29
  • Others have answered questions on this topic. Have you done a search for "merge multiple data frames"? It involves something like `Reduce("merge", mydatalist)` – Pierre L Oct 25 '16 at 17:29

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