[R] finding common elements in a list

[Andy Bunn]

> The original post is ambiguous: do you want to find the intersection or do
> you want to find whether a prespecified set is in the 
> intersection? Patrick
> provided you an answer to the latter while you provided an answer to the
> former. Actually, I thought using table as you did (mod the need for no
> replicates) was clever. A more direct but I think considerably slower
> approach would be to use intersect() in a loop: 
> 
> inall<-intersect(foo[[1]],foo[[,2]])
> for(i in seq(3, to=length(foo))inall<-intersect(inall,foo[[i]])
> 
> I suspect you already thought of this and rejected it. Other than
> transparency, I think the only advantage it has is that it will work for
> something other than lists of numerics, e.g. it will work for lists of
> factors, which the table() solution would not.


Indeed, the first post was ambiguous. I was after the type of solution that I posted: the intersection rather than a prespecified set. Given that, I suppose my use of table is satisfactory.

Thanks Patrick and Bert.

-Andy