[R] Reducing the "dimension" of a list object

[Uwe Ligges]

Bogaso wrote:
> Please consider following code :
> 
> set.seed(1)
> res <- vector("list")
> for (i in 1:5) {
>    res1 <- vector("list")
>    res1[[1]] <- letters[1:5]
>    res1[[2]] <- rnorm(5)
>    res1[[3]] <- rnorm(5); res[[i]] <- res1 }
> res[[1]]
> 
> # Now I want to reduce the dimension of "res" through creating a data frame
> like that
> mat <- data.frame(nrow=5, ncol=2)
> for (i in 1:5) {
>    mat[i,1] <- res[[i]][[1]][1]
>    mat[i,2] <- res[[i]][[2]][1] }; mat
> 
> Here I am looking for more "efficient" code by avoiding the loop. Is there
> any smart way to do that ?


Perhaps directly rewritten without thinking:

mat <- data.frame(
     letters = sapply(res, "[[", c(1,1)),
     numbers = sapply(res, "[[", c(2,1)))

which should be roughly 2.5 times faster.

Uwe Ligges


> Thanks,