Dear list,

I hope this is the right place to post a feature request. If there's 
exists a more formal channel (e.g. as for bug reports), I'd appreciate a 
pointer.

I work a lot with named nested lists with arbitrary degrees of 
"nestedness". In order to retrieve the names and/or values of "bottom 
layer/bottom tier", I love the functionality of 'unlist()', or 
'names(unlist(x))', respectively as it avoids traversing the nested 
lists via recursive loop constructs. I'm also aware that the general 
suggestion is probably to keep nestedness as low as possible when 
working with lists, but arbitrary deeply nested lists came in quite 
handy for me as long as each element is named and as long as I can 
quickly add and retrieve element values via "name paths".

Here's a little example list:
lst <- list(a=list(a.1=list(a.1.1=NA, a.1.2=5), a.2=list()), b=NULL)

It would be awesome if 'unlist(x)' could be extended with the following 
functionality:

1) An argument such as 'delim' that controls how the respective layer 
names are pasted.
Right now, they are always separated by a dot:
 > names(unlist(lst))
[1] "a.a.1.a.1.1" "a.a.1.a.1.2"
Desired:
 > names(unlist(lst, delim="/"))
[1] "a/a.1/a.1.1" "a/a.1/a.1.2"
 > names(unlist(lst, delim="_"))
[1] "a_a.1_a.1.1" "a_a.1_a.1.2"

2)  An argument that allows to include either elements of zero length or 
of value NULL to be *included* in the resulting output.
Right now, they are dropped (which makes perfect sense as NULL values 
and zero length values are dropped in vectors):
 > c(1,2, NULL, numeric())
[1] 1 2
 > unlist(lst)
a.a.1.a.1.1 a.a.1.a.1.2
          NA           5
Desired:
 > unlist(lst, delim="/", keep.special=TRUE)
$a/a.1/a.1.1
[1] NA

$a/a.1/a.1.2
[1] 5

$a/a.2
list()

$b
NULL
Of course, this would not be a true 'unlist' anymore, but something like 
'retrieveBottomLayer()'.

Thanks a lot for providing such fast stuff as 'unlist()'! Unfortunately, 
I don't know my way around internal C routines and therefore I would 
greatly appreciate if core team developers would consider my two 
suggestions.

Best regards,
Janko


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Janko Thyson*
janko.thyson@ku-eichstaett.de <mailto:janko.thyson@ku-eichstaett.de>

Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt School of Management
Statistics and Quantitative Methods
Auf der Schanz 49
D-85049 Ingolstadt

www.wfi.edu/lsqm <http://www.wfi.edu/lsqm>

Fon: +49 841 937-1923
Fax: +49 841 937-1965

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-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Janko Thyson*
janko.thyson@googlemail.com <mailto:janko.thyson@googlemail.com>

Jesuitenstraße 3
D-85049 Ingolstadt

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