Passing output to an object in a function

[trent]

Hello,

I've got some files exported from a work data system that I'm trying to streamline importing into R

What I'd like to do is to be able to run

> importData("district/hospital_0618.xls")

and have the output be:

> hospital
# A tibble: 4,332 x 5
   date       facility           agent           ddd pt.days
   <date>     <chr>              <chr>         <dbl>   <dbl>
<data here>

Code as follows:

importData <- function(arg1) {                         ### arg1 = folder/name_date.xls
  arg2 <- str_match(arg1, "/(.*?)_")[,2]               ### extract "name" out of arg1
  assign(arg2, 0, envir =.GlobalEnv)                   ### help with this bit - use arg2 as the name for the extracted data
  qcolname <- unlist(c(read_excel(arg1, col_names = FALSE, range = "A3:H3")))       ## files in standard format, this extracts the colnames
  arg2 <<- read_excel(arg1, col_names = qcolname, skip = 5)                         ## read the files without the header
  arg2 <<- drop_na(arg2)                                                            ## dump the lines with blank cells
  arg2 <<- unite(arg2, Month, Year, col = "date", sep = "-")                    ## unite Month and Year columns to "date" as %b-%Y
  arg2$date <<- parse_date(arg2$date, "%b-%Y")                                      ## make it into a date so it works
  
  arg2 <<- arg2 %>%                                      ## rename the columns so they're easier to work with
    rename("facility" = `Facility`) %>%
    rename("agent" = `Abstract Product`) %>%
    rename("atc.class" = `Sub-class`) %>%
    rename("ddd" = `DDD`) %>%
    rename("pt.days" = `Patient Days`) %>%
    rename("usage" = `DDDs / 1000 Patient Days`) %>%
    select(date, facility, agent, ddd, pt.days)          ## yes, I know I've dropped them
}

Not quite sure how to pass the output of the trimmed string to a variable name that carries on outside the function.

Thanks in advance.