R - passing object to function based on the NAME of the object - r

Question

Suppose in R I have multiple GLM objects from multiple glm() function calls.
glm_01
glm_02
...
glm_nn
...and suppose that I want to do all possible pairwise comparisons using a chi-squared or F ANOVA test.
anova(glm_01, glm_02, test = "F")
anova(glm_01, glm_03, test = "F")
anova(glm_01, glm_04, test = "F")
...
I don't want to do this manually because the list of models is quite long. Instead I'd like to grab a list of relevant model objects (anything starting with "glm_") and do all pairwise comparisons automatically. However I'm unsure how to pass the model objects (rather than their names in string form) to the anova() function.
As a simple example:
data(mtcars)
# create some models
glm_01 <- glm(mpg ~ cyl , mtcars, family = gaussian())
glm_02 <- glm(mpg ~ cyl + disp , mtcars, family = gaussian())
glm_03 <- glm(mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp , mtcars, family = gaussian())
glm_04 <- glm(mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp + wt, mtcars, family = gaussian())
# get list of relevant model objects from the R environment
model_list <- ls()
model_list <- model_list[substr(model_list, 1, 4) == "glm_"]
# create a table to store the pairwise ANOVA results
n_models <- length(model_list)
anova_table <- matrix(0, nrow = n_models, ncol = n_models)
# loop through twice and do pairwise comparisons
for(row_index in 1:n_models) {
for(col_index in 1:n_models) {
anova_table[row_index, col_index] <- anova(model_list[row_index], model_list[col_index], test = "F")$'Pr(>F)'[2]
}
}
...but of course this loop at the end doesn't work because I'm not passing model objects to anova(), I'm passing the names of the objects as strings instead. How do I tell anova() to use the object that the string refers to, instead of the string itself?
Thank you.
======================
Possible solution:
data(mtcars)
glm_list <- list()
glm_list$glm_01 <- glm(mpg ~ cyl , mtcars, family = gaussian())
glm_list$glm_02 <- glm(mpg ~ cyl + disp , mtcars, family = gaussian())
glm_list$glm_03 <- glm(mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp , mtcars, family = gaussian())
glm_list$glm_04 <- glm(mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp + wt, mtcars, family = gaussian())
# create a table to store the pairwise ANOVA results
n_models <- length(glm_list)
anova_table <- matrix(0, nrow = n_models, ncol = n_models)
# loop through twice and do pairwise comparisons
row_idx <- 0
col_idx <- 0
for(row_glm in glm_list)
{
row_idx <- row_idx + 1
for(col_glm in glm_list)
{
col_idx <- col_idx + 1
anova_table[row_idx, col_idx] <- anova(row_glm, col_glm, test = "F")$'Pr(>F)'[2]
}
col_idx <- 0
}
row_idx <- 0

Answer 1

The easiest way to do this would be to keep all your models in a list. This makes it simple to iterate over them. For example, you can create all of your models and do a pairwise comparison between all of them like this:
data(mtcars)
f_list <- list(mpg ~ cyl,
mpg ~ cyl + disp,
mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp,
mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp + wt)
all_glms <- lapply(f_list, glm, data = mtcars, family = gaussian)
all_pairs <- as.data.frame(combn(length(all_glms), 2))
result <- lapply(all_pairs, function(i) anova(all_glms[[i[1]]], all_glms[[i[2]]]))
Which gives you:
result
#> $V1
#> Analysis of Deviance Table
#>
#> Model 1: mpg ~ cyl
#> Model 2: mpg ~ cyl + disp
#> Resid. Df Resid. Dev Df Deviance
#> 1 30 308.33
#> 2 29 270.74 1 37.594
#>
#> $V2
#> Analysis of Deviance Table
#>
#> Model 1: mpg ~ cyl
#> Model 2: mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp
#> Resid. Df Resid. Dev Df Deviance
#> 1 30 308.33
#> 2 28 261.37 2 46.965
#>
#> $V3
#> Analysis of Deviance Table
#>
#> Model 1: mpg ~ cyl
#> Model 2: mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp + wt
#> Resid. Df Resid. Dev Df Deviance
#> 1 30 308.33
#> 2 27 170.44 3 137.89
#>
#> $V4
#> Analysis of Deviance Table
#>
#> Model 1: mpg ~ cyl + disp
#> Model 2: mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp
#> Resid. Df Resid. Dev Df Deviance
#> 1 29 270.74
#> 2 28 261.37 1 9.3709
#>
#> $V5
#> Analysis of Deviance Table
#>
#> Model 1: mpg ~ cyl + disp
#> Model 2: mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp + wt
#> Resid. Df Resid. Dev Df Deviance
#> 1 29 270.74
#> 2 27 170.44 2 100.3
#>
#> $V6
#> Analysis of Deviance Table
#>
#> Model 1: mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp
#> Model 2: mpg ~ cyl + disp + hp + wt
#> Resid. Df Resid. Dev Df Deviance
#> 1 28 261.37
#> 2 27 170.44 1 90.925
Created on 2020-08-25 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)

Answer 2

If you want to reference arbitrary objects in an accessible environment by symbol without putting them into a list object, the standard way to return the top object on the search list whose symbol is equal to a string is get(), or the vector equivalent mget(). I.e. get("glm_01") gets you the top object on the search list that has the symbol glm_01. The most minimal modification to your approach would be to wrap your calls to model_list[row_index] and model_list[col_index] in get().
You can be more precise about where to look for objects by assigning the models in a named environment and only getting from that environment (using the envir parameter to get()).