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Exercise

Create valid names for multiple instruments

An earlier exercise taught you how to use setSymbolLookup() to set a default data source for getSymbols(). You can also use setSymbolLookup() to create a mapping between the instrument symbol and the name of the R object.

This is useful if you want to download data for a lot symbols that are not syntactically valid names, or symbols that have names that conflict with other R variable names.

An example of a name that conflicts is the symbol for AT&T's stock, T, which is often used as a short form for the logical value TRUE.

To change the name of a given symbol, arguments must be passed to setSymbolLookup() as a list, like so: setSymbolLookup(NEW_NAME = list(name = "OLD_NAME")).

Instructions

100 XP
  • Set the name for "BRK-A" to "BRK.A".
  • Set the name for "T" (AT&T) to "ATT".
  • Use one getSymbols() call to load data for both instruments using the new names you assigned to them.