Consider the following list:

example_list <- list(x = 1, y = 2, z = 3)

There are multiple ways to extract items from example_list; for example, example_list$x or example_list[["x"]] will work.

It is also possible to extract items from example_list by calling $ directly, i.e.,

`$`(example_list, "x")

However, the following does not work:

bork <- "x"
`$`(example_list, bork)       ## Returns NULL
`$`(example_list, eval(bork)) ## Returns error: invalid subscript type 'language'

How can I call $ directly with variable item names?

R version 4.4.0