[R] Transfering data from R list to other document format

David Winsemius dwinsemius at comcast.net
Tue May 15 16:55:58 CEST 2012


On May 15, 2012, at 6:56 AM, pannigh wrote:

> Dear users,
> I want to transfer a list of results from R to some practical  
> format, from
> where I can continue manipulating, copying,... the values, e.g. :
>
> list1 <- list("My first list", matrix(1:6, ncol=3), c(1,2,3,4,5,6) )
> # Imagining I forgot something and want to add it to the list like:
> list1[[4]] <-  list(c(4,4,4), "This is it")
> # Now I want to transfer the list to e.g. a text document:
> lapply(L1, write, "test.txt", append=TRUE, ncolumns=100)
>
> However, this does not work and I don't know why.

Two reasons:
The glaringly obvious error is that you have constructed 'list1' and  
then called lapply with an argument of 'L1'.
The more difficult error to see is that 'write' will not accept a list  
of lists, which is what your fourth element. Using a recursive apply  
function can help. Try either on  of these:

 > rapply(list1, function(x) { cat(c(x, "\n"), file="test.txt",  
append=TRUE) })
NULL

 > rapply(list1, function(x) { write(x, file="test.txt", append=TRUE) })
NULL
>


-- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT



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