[R] Treating a vector of characters as object names to create list

[Bert Gunter]

Time for an R tutorial or two to learn how to use the "apply" family
in R. I think what you want is:

merged_list <- lapply(merging, get)


-- 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 Sun, Sep 4, 2016 at 2:57 PM, Ryan Utz <utz.ryan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a vector of characters that I know will be object names and I'd like
> to treat this vector as a series of names to create a list. But, for the
> life of me, I cannot figure out how to treat a vector of characters as a
> vector of object names when creating a list.
>
> For example, this does exactly what I want to do (with 'merged.parameters'
> as the end goal):
>
> ###
> merging=c('alkalinity','iron')
> alkalinity=c('39086','29801','90410','00410')
> iron=c('01045','01046')
> merged.parameters=list(alkalinity,iron)
> ###
>
> But, say I have many, many parameters in 'merging' beyond alkalinity and
> iron and I'd like to just cleanly turn the elements in 'merging' into a
> list. This does not work:
>
> ###
> merged.parameters=list(get(merging))
> ###
>
> because it's only grabbing the first element of 'merging', for some reason.
> Any advice? This feels like it really should be easy...
>
> --
>
> Ryan Utz, Ph.D.
> Assistant professor of water resources
> *chatham**UNIVERSITY*
> Home/Cell: (724) 272-7769
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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