[R] operations on columns when data frames are in a list

[Steve E.]

Hello R folks,

I have recently discovered the power of working with multiple data frames in
lists. However, I am having trouble understanding how to perform operations
on individual columns of data frames in the list. For example, I have a
water quality data set (sample data included below) that consists of roughly
a dozen data frames. Some of the data frames have a chr column called
'Month' that I need to to convert to a date with the proper format. I would
like to iterate through all of the data frames in the list and format all of
those that have the 'Month' column. I can accomplish this with a for-loop
(e.g., below) but I cannot figure out how to do this with the plyr or apply
families. This is just one example of the formatting that I have to perform
so I would really like to avoid loops, and I would love to learn how to
better work with lists as well.

I would appreciate greatly any guidance.


Thank you and regards,
Stevan


a for-loop like this works, but is not an ideal solution:

for (i in 1:length(data)) {if ("Month" %in% names(data[[i]]))
data[[i]]$Month<- as.POSIXct(data[[i]]$Month, format="%Y/%m/%d")}



sample data (head of two data frames from the list of all data frames):

structure(list(`3D_Fluorescence.csv` = structure(list(ID = 1:6, 
    Site_Number = c("R5", "R6a", "R8", "R9a", "R14", "R15"), 
    Month = c("2001/10/01", "2001/10/01", "2001/10/01", "2001/10/01", 
    "2001/10/01", "2001/10/01"), Exc_A = c(215L, 215L, NA, NA, 
    215L, 215L), Em_A = c(422.5, 410.5, NA, NA, 408.5, 408), 
    Fl_A = c(303, 296.86, NA, NA, 297.62, 174.75), Exc_B = c(325L, 
    325L, NA, NA, 325L, 325L), Em_B = c(416, 413, NA, NA, 418.5, 
    417.5), Fl_B = c(137.32, 116.1, NA, NA, 132.48, 77.44)), .Names =
c("ID", 
"Site_Number", "Month", "Exc_A", "Em_A", "Fl_A", "Exc_B", "Em_B", 
"Fl_B"), row.names = c(NA, 6L), class = "data.frame"), algae.csv =
structure(list(
    ID = 1:6, SiteNumber = c("R1", "R2A", "R2B", "R3", "R4", 
    "R5"), SiteLocation = c("CAP canal above Waddell Canal", 
    "Lake Pleasant integrated sample", "Lake Pleasant integrated sample", 
    "Waddell Canal", "Cap Canal at 7th St.", "Verde River btwn Horseshoe and
Bartlett"
    ), ClusterName = c("cap", "cap", "cap", "cap", "cap", "verde"
    ), SiteAcronym = c("cap-siphon", "pleasant-epi", "pleasant-hypo", 
    "waddell canal", "cap @ 7th st", "verde abv bartlett"), Date =
c("1999/08/18", 
    "1999/08/18", "1999/08/18", "1999/08/18", "1999/08/18", "1999/08/16"
    ), Month = c("1999/08/01", "1999/08/01", "1999/08/01", "1999/08/01", 
    "1999/08/01", "1999/08/01"), SampleType = c("", "", "", "", 
    "", ""), Conductance = c(800, 890, 850, 870, 830, 500), ChlA = c(0.3, 
    0.3, 0.6, 0.8, 1.1, 7.6), Phaeophytin = c(0, 0, 0, 0, 0.7, 
    4.7), PhaeophytinChlA = c(0.7, 0.7, 1.3, 5.3, 0.7, 4.7), 
    Chlorophyta = c(0L, 0L, 18L, 0L, 0L, 21L), Cyanophyta = c(8L, 
    0L, 0L, 0L, 7L, 79L), Bacillariophyta = c(135L, 76L, 0L, 
    18L, 54L, 195L), Total = c(147L, 76L, 18L, 18L, 61L, 302L
    ), AlgaeComments = c("", "", "", "", "", "")), .Names = c("ID", 
"SiteNumber", "SiteLocation", "ClusterName", "SiteAcronym", "Date", 
"Month", "SampleType", "Conductance", "ChlA", "Phaeophytin", 
"PhaeophytinChlA", "Chlorophyta", "Cyanophyta", "Bacillariophyta", 
"Total", "AlgaeComments"), row.names = c(NA, 6L), class = "data.frame")),
.Names = c("3D_Fluorescence.csv", 
"algae.csv")) 



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