[R] Evaluating an expression

Bert Gunter bgunter.4567 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 4 18:51:39 CEST 2016


I think you need to spend some time with an R tutorial or two to learn
how to handle such basics yourself.

However, if I understand correctly, probably the easiest way to do it
is by converting a matrix of 0's to a data frame -- which you
shouldn't do at all if you can do your analysis directly with the
matrix (it's almost always faster, sometimes considerably so). e.g.

adf <- data.frame(matrix(0, nrow=10,ncol=20))

Of course, you may then wish to provide more informative names for
your columns via the names() function.

Also, I would question whether you need to do any of this in the first
place. It is rarely necessary in R to initialize a data frame or
matrix.

Finally, you should almost never need the eval(parse()) construction,
which treats R as a macro language instead of taking advantage of its
functional programming paradigm. Again, the of sort thing that good R
tutorials can help you with. There are many on the web. Some good
recommendations can be found here:

https://www.rstudio.com/online-learning/#R

HTH,

Bert


Bert Gunter

"The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along
and sticking things into it."
-- Opus (aka Berkeley Breathed in his "Bloom County" comic strip )


On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 9:22 AM, Janszen, Derek
<derek.janszen at precisionformedicine.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to create a data frame similar to the following, but greatly scaled up:
> df <- data.frame(aaa= c("a","b","c"), integer(3), integer(3))
> names(df)[2:3] <- paste("var",1:2,sep="")
> which yields
>   aaa  var1  var2
> 1   a     0     0
> 2   b     0     0
> 3   c     0     0
>
> I would not relish having to paste 'integer(3)' 5000 times :(
>
> So (I figure) there must be a way to do this programmatically, something akin to
> exp1 <- paste(rep("integer(3)",2),collapse=',')
> which looks like it might work:     "integer(3),integer(3)" , as in the following
> df <- data.frame(aaa=xxx, eval(parse(text=exp1)))
> but this yields
>
> Error in parse(text = exp1) : <text>:1:11: unexpected ','
>
> 1: integer(3),
>
>               ^
>
>
> Not sure just why this doesn't work (?parse does not help), but it's not important right now.
>
> I have used eval and parse in the past, but not in a way similar to what I'm trying to do now.
>
>
>
> exp1 <- rep("integer(3)",2) gives "integer(3)" "integer(3)"
>
> and upon parse(text=exp1) gives expression(integer(3), integer(3))
>
> which appears to be promising, and does not give an error in the following
>
>         df <- data.frame(aaa=xxx, eval(parse(text=exp1)))
>
> but alas, does not give the desired result
>   aaa eval.parse.text...exp1..
> 1   a                        0
> 2   b                        0
> 3   c                        0
>
>
>
>
> I'm guessing that only the last evaluation of the expression is being evaluated, which I can understand.
>
> I feel certain that what I want to accomplish can be done programmatically, but am at a loss as to just how to do that.
> Chances are this has been covered before. If so, apologies.
> If not, can anyone point me to references with more info than the help pages, or suggest a solution? :)
>
> Thanks,
> Derek
>
> Derek Janszen, PhD
> Statistician, Analytics
>
> Precision for Medicine<http://www.precisionformedicine.com/>
> 8425 Progress Drive, Suite M | Frederick, MD 21701
> +1 240 415 6004 office
>
>
>
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