[R] Basic Question on Keys/Values

[Douglas Bates]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 12:55 PM, Dumblauskas, Jerry
<jerry.dumblauskas at credit-suisse.com> wrote:
> As a java programmer, I'm having issue conceptualizing the following use
> case:

> Given an value, passed into a function, how do I pull out the lookup?

> Ie.
> A list of keys (key1, key2, key3)
> A list of values (val1,val2,val3)

> I want to write a function (or is there something built in?) such that

> Callit <- (thekey) {
> (magic happens here)
> Return value
> }

If the keys are text strings then you can use a named list as the container.

> foo <- list(a = 1:10, b = LETTERS[1:3], ttt = Formaldehyde)
> foo$b
[1] "A" "B" "C"
> bar <- "a"
> foo$bar
NULL
> foo[[bar]]
 [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

Note that the $ operator is an extractor for an explicit name.  If you
want the value corresponding to a key which is itself stored as an
object in R you must use the '[[' notation.

Lists are suitable for a small to moderate number of key/value pairs.
For large numbers of key/value pairs you may want to consider
environments instead.

> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks a bunch!
>
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