\Header{make.names}{Make Legal R Names Out of Strings}
\keyword{character}{make.names}
\begin{Description}\relax
Make legal \R{} names out of every \code{names[i]} string.
Invalid characters are translated to \code{"."}.\end{Description}
\begin{Usage}
\begin{verbatim}
make.names(names, unique=FALSE)
\end{verbatim}
\end{Usage}
\begin{Arguments}
\begin{ldescription}
\item[\code{names}] character (vector) to be coerced to proper names.
\item[\code{unique}] logical; if \code{TRUE}, the resulting strings are
unique.  This may be desired for, e.g., column names.
\end{ldescription}
\end{Arguments}
\begin{Value}
character vector of same length as \code{names} with each changed
to a legal name.\end{Value}
\begin{SeeAlso}\relax
\code{\Link{names}},\code{\Link{character}},\code{\Link{data.frame}}\end{SeeAlso}
\begin{Examples}
\begin{ExampleCode}
make.names(c("a and b", "a_and_b"), unique=TRUE)#-> "a.and.b"  "a.and.b1"

all(make.names(letters) == letters)# TRUE

data(state)
state.name[make.names(state.name) != state.name]# those 10 with a space
\end{ExampleCode}
\end{Examples}

