Converting string to data masking with dyplr inside function - r

Question

I'm trying to make a function which restructures some data. I got this function to work and it looked somehthing like this:
function_1 <- function(df, group, focal, reference){
if (reference == "rest"){
df <- df %>% dplyr::mutate({{group}} := recode({{group}}, {{focal}} := {{focal}}, .default = "rest"))
df <- df %>% dplyr::select(ac_id, question_id, question_result_score, {{group}})
df <- df[!(duplicated(dplyr::select(df, ac_id, question_id))), ]
df <- df %>% dplyr::arrange(ac_id)
}
else{
df <- dplyr::filter(df, {{group}} == {{focal}} | {{group}} == {{reference}})
df <- df %>% dplyr::select(ac_id, question_id, question_result_score, {{group}})
df <- df[!(duplicated(dplyr::select(df, ac_id, question_id))), ]
df <- df %>% dplyr::arrange(ac_id)
}
return(df)
}
# and I run the following command:
function_1(mydata, gender, "male", "rest")
This works exactly as I want it to. Now this needs to go inside another function (let's call this function_2), where I loop over different demographic characteristics (age, gender, english-native, etc.) and demographic indicators (e.g. "male" (from gender), "female" (from gender), etc.).
Inside function_2 we loop over the output of another function, which returns a dataframe with the following structure:
group
focal
reference
gender
female
male
gender
female
rest
gender
male
rest
english
native
non-native
...
...
...
The problem when looping over this output is (I THINK) that the input of function_1 becomes:
function_1(mydata, "gender", "female", "male")
#instead of
function_1(mydata, gender, "female", "male")
So without the quotation marks. Does anybody know a way how to fix function_1 such that it works with input as shown above?
Any help would be greatly appreciated and if any other information let me know!
KR
P.S.
Maybe the following helps. To generate the table as shown above, we use a function which I stored in a variable called viable_cat and this output has the following properties:
typeof(viable_cat)
[1] "character"
> class(viable_cat)
[1] "matrix" "array" ```

Answer 1

I recommend !!sym(.) for turning strings into variable names. For example:
library(dplyr)
data(mtcars)
in_var = "mpg"
out_var = "mpg2"
new = mtcars %>%
mutate(!!sym(out_var) := 2 * !!sym(in_var))
You can pass strings between multiple functions with ease.
I know this technique is not recommended by programming with dplyr. It is an older approach for programming with dplyr. I find it more applicable to my use cases than some of the options currently recommended.