Treat a Character as a variable

Question

Suppose I have the following code

a<-c(1,2,3)
b<-'a'

Now I was to treat the string in 'b' as the variable 'a' when I input it into some function or operation. Like imagine that "treat.as.variable()" was a real function it would do this:

treat.as.variable(b)+c(1,2,4)
[1] 2 4 7

is there a function like this, predefined? Or a way to do this in general?

Answer 1

Use get function

> get(b) + c(1,2,4)
[1] 2 4 7