Suppose that I have a data frame with a column whose name is stored in a variable. Accessing this column using the variable is easy using bracket notation: df <- data.frame(A = rep(1, 10), B = rep(2, 10)) column.name <- 'B' df[,column.name] But it is not obvious how to access an arbitrary column using a call to with(). The naive approach with(df, column.name) effectively evaluates column.name in the caller's environment. How can I delay evaluation sufficiently that with() will provide the same results that brackets give?