[R] Combine lists into a data frame or append them to a text file

[Ek Esawi]

Hi Jim,

Thanks again. Actually i changed my code where the lists are not
nested. Your code works, as you said for the example, but still is not
working for my lists (30). My lists have different columns and rows
and several are NULL; plus there are many blank space which i suppose
don't make much difference, but not sure. I will try to send an actual
output..

Thanks again---EK.

> for (i in 1:length(MyTables)) {
+     write.table(as.data.frame(fillList(MyTables[i])),
+                 file = "Temp.txt",append = TRUE,quote = TRUE)}
Error in (function (..., row.names = NULL, check.rows = FALSE,
check.names = TRUE,  :
  arguments imply differing number of rows: 4, 50, 53, 8, 20
In addition: There were 20 warnings (use warnings() to see t

On Sun, Dec 16, 2018 at 4:10 PM Jim Lemon <drjimlemon using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ek,
> Okay, you got me. I didn't write the function to handle nested lists.
> If you combine your initial lists into a single level list, I think it
> will work:
>
> fillList<-function(x) {
>  maxrows<-max(unlist(lapply(x,length)))
>  return(lapply(x,"[",1:maxrows))
> }
> AA <- list(a=c(1,2,3,4),b = c("a","b","c"))
> BB <- list(c=c(1,2,3,4,5),d=c("a","b","c","d","e"))
> mylist <- c(AA,BB)
> mydf<as.data.frame(fillList(mylist))
>
> Jim
>
> On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 12:45 AM Ek Esawi <esawiek using gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you Jim and Bert,
> >
> > I tried Jim's function and it works. But here is an example just in case.
> >
> > AA <- list(a=c(1,2,3,4),b = c("a","b","c"))
> > BB <- list(c=c(1,2,3,4,5),d=c("a","b","c","d","e"))
> > mylist <- (list(AA,BB))
> >
> > lapply(mylist,function(x) write.table(x,file = test.txt))
> >  Show Traceback
> >
> >  Error in (function (..., row.names = NULL, check.rows = FALSE,
> > check.names = TRUE,  :
> >   arguments imply differing number of rows: 4, 3
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 16, 2018 at 1:03 AM Jim Lemon <drjimlemon using gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi Ek,
> > > I thought there would be a simple fix for this, but had to write a
> > > little function:
> > >
> > > fillList<-function(x) {
> > >  maxrows<-max(unlist(lapply(x,length)))
> > >  return(lapply(x,"[",1:maxrows))
> > > }
> > >
> > > that fills up the rows of each list with NAs. I got the expected result with:
> > >
> > > testlist<-list(a=1:8,b=1:9,c=1:10)
> > > as.data.frame(fillList(testlist))
> > >
> > > so:
> > >
> > > for (i in 1:length(MyTables)) {
> > > write.table(as.data.frame(fillList(MyTables[i])),
> > >  file = "Temp.txt",append = TRUE,quote = TRUE)
> > >
> > > may do the job.
> > >
> > > Jim
> > >
> > > On Sun, Dec 16, 2018 at 2:28 PM Ek Esawi <esawiek using gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi All,
> > > >
> > > > I have an R object that is made up of N number of lists which are all
> > > > of different number of columns and rows.  I want to combine the N
> > > > lists into a single data frame or write (append) them into text file.
> > > > I hope the question is clear and doesn’t require an example. I am
> > > > hoping to accomplish this using base R functions.
> > > > Below is what I tried but both gave me the same error which I do
> > > > understand, I think, but I don’t know how to fix it. My R object is
> > > > MyTables
> > > >
> > > > lapply(MyTables, function(x) write.table(x, file = "Temp.txt",append = TRUE ))
> > > > OR
> > > > for (i in 1:length(MyTables)) {
> > > > write.table(MyTables[i], file = "Temp.txt",append = TRUE,quote = TRUE)
> > > >
> > > > the error
> > > > Error in (function (..., row.names = NULL, check.rows = FALSE,
> > > > check.names = TRUE,  :
> > > >   arguments imply differing number of rows: 51, 8, 30
> > > >
> > > > Thanks--EK
> > > >
> > > > ______________________________________________
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