title: R - Operate on a column w/o explicitely reassigning it?
body: <p>I'm often writing things like: </p>
  
  <p><code>dataframe$this_column &lt;- as.Date(dataframe$this_column)</code></p>
  
  <p>That is, when changing some column in my data frame [table], I'm constantly writing the column twice. Is there some function that allows me to directly change the data frame w/o explicitly reassigning it? Say: <code>ch(dataframe$this_column, as.Date())</code></p>
  
  <p>EDIT: While similar, the potential duplicate is not the same. I am not looking for a way to shorten self-referential reassignments. I'm looking to avoid the explicit reassignment all together. The answer I accepted here is an appropriate solution (and much better than the answers provided in the "duplicate" question, in regards to their relevance to my question).</p>