Question

Is there a function that can be an alternative to paste ?
I would like to know if something like this exists in R:

> buildString ( "Hi {1}, Have a very nice {2} ! " , c("Tom", "day") )

Answer 1

frankc and DWin are right to point you to sprintf().

If for some reason your replacement parts really will be in the form of a vector (i.e. c("Tom", "day")), you can use do.call() to pass them in to sprintf():

string <- "Hi %s, Have a really nice %s!"
vals   <- c("Tom", "day")

do.call(sprintf, as.list(c(string, vals)))
# [1] "Hi Tom, Have a really nice day!"