[R] Embedding lists in matrices and matrices in lists

[Michael Kogan]

Thanks, I was already told this solution by somebody (he just forgot to 
add the mailing list as CC). Well, the purpose of the whole thing is to 
get something like this: 
http://home.att.net/~numericana/data/polycount.htm where the numbers in 
the table cells give the number of matrices saved in the corresponding 
cell.  The program looks like this now: 
http://paste.ubuntuusers.de/396117/ It even runs (though errors occur if 
I add th process r into the main loop, but I'm still not done with it...).

Petr PIKAL schrieb:
> Hi
>   
>
> No. It is the problem of scoping. AFAIK functions create their own 
> environment and everything what is assigned inside the function does not 
> affect outside objects unless you use <<- assignment operator. 
>
> i<-100
> ff<-function(x) i<-x
> ff(10)
> i
> [1] 100
> fff<-function(x) i<<-x
> fff(200)
> i
> [1] 200
>
> However I would distract you from this practice. Personally I used such 
> assignment only when I started with S/R about 10 years ago.
>
> Why do you want a database to be a matrix? It seems to be that list 
> structure is in that case more flexible and there are *apply functions for 
> manipulation with lists. E.g. structure lm(...) results in list and 
> summary(lm(...)) is again a list with quite complicated structure.
>
> If I understand it correctly, during your computation you will have as a 
> result matrices with arbitrary dimensions.
>
> I would make a list
>
> lll<-vector("list", 1)
>
> and in simple loop
>
> for (i in 1:n) {
>
> do any computation here together with sophisticated and complicated 
> functions and assign results to your list
>
> lll[[1]] <- result of functions which itself can have quite complicated 
> structure
>
> }
>
> If you want nested list just add another cycle and use
>
> lll[[i]][[j]] <-some other result.
>
> With choosing appropriate structure of your date you can save yourself 
> much problems.
> Regards
> Petr
>