[R] linear lists, creation, insertion, deletion, traversal *someone?*

[Gabor Grothendieck]

Also check out ?append and the after= argument, in particular.

On 3/1/06, Ben Bolker <bolker at ufl.edu> wrote:
> Christian Hoffmann <christian.hoffmann <at> wsl.ch> writes:
>
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > In a second try I will ask this list to give me some useful pointers.
>
>   [There is a general problem with the list, because of its
> volunteer nature: easy questions and questions that catch peoples'
> attention get answered.  Others don't.  I saw your initial question
> but wasn't sufficiently clear on the distinction between "linear
> lists" and lists as implemented in R to know what you needed that
> an R list() couldn't do ... and I don't have Wirth on my shelf
> and didn't have time to go look for a copy.]
>
> > Linear lists, as described e.g. by N.Wirth in "Algorithms and Data
> > Structures", seem not to be implemented in S/R, although in lisp we have
> > cons, car, cdr.
>
>  cons would seem to be roughly equivalent to c() (except
> that you have to make sure that the arguments are lists:
> c("pine",list("fir","oak","maple")) won't work, you have
> to do c(list("pine"),list("fir","oak","maple"))).
>   car(x) is x[1]
>   cdr(x) is x[-1]
>
> > Nevertheless I want to implement an algorithm using such linear lists,
> > porting a trusted program to R (S). I need:
> >
> > (from Modula/Oberon)
> >       pSC* = POINTER TO SC;
> >       SC* = RECORD    Next*: pSC; ......
> > ...     END;
> >
> > # generate and fill a linked list:
> > VAR   p, pA, Kol: pSC;
> >       NEW( Kol);
> >       pA := Kol;
> >       while () {
> >               NEW( p );
> >               pA.Next := p;
> >               pA := p;
> >               ...
> >       }
> >
> > Mapping this list management to R's list() is possible, but may not be
> > so transparent. Insertions and deletions from a list may be more convoluted.
>
>   I don't know Modula.  What determines the length of the
> list you are constructing here?  It looks like this is more
> or less analogous to a while() { mylist <- c(mylist,newelement) }
> (although there are probably more efficient ways to do it)
>
>   Setting a list element to NULL deletes it; you can also use
> negative indexing to drop one or more elements from a list.
>  (pages 28 and 29 of "introduction to R"
>   I don't know offhand if there's a simple way to modify
> a list by inserting an element into the middle, bumping
> up all the other indices; R deals much more with indices
> than with pointer references.  If you wanted to insert
> an element between items w and w+1 you could say
> newlist <- c(oldlist[1:w],newelement,oldlist[(w+1):length(oldlist)])
> but I appreciate that this may not be what you're looking
> for.
>
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