[R] Function for Data Frame

Sparks, John James jspark4 at uic.edu
Mon Apr 29 16:23:22 CEST 2013


Dear R Helpers,

I have about 20 data frames that I need to do a series of data scrubbing
steps to.  I have the list of data frames in a list so that I can use
lapply.  I am trying to build a function that will do the data scrubbing
that I need.  However, I am new to functions and there is something
fundamental that I am not understanding.  I use the return function at the
end of the function and this completes the data processing specified in
the function, but leaves the data frame that I want changed unaffected. 
How do I get my function to apply its results to the data frame in
question instead of simply displaying the results to the screen?

Any helpful guidance would be most appreciated.

--John Sparks


x=as.data.frame(matrix(c(1,2,3,
        1,2,3,
        1,2,2,
        1,2,2,
       1,1,1),ncol=3,byrow=T))


myfunc<-function(DF){
 DF<-subset(DF,select=-c(V1))
 return(DF)
}

myfunc(x)

#How to get this change to data frame x?
#And preferrably not send the results to the screen?
x



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