R help - Aug 2007 - change the names of all listed objects

Dear list members,
I have created seven objects, from a to g, so that ls() gives me
[1] "a" "b" "c" "d" "e"
"f" "g"

how can I automatically change their names in

"a1" "b1" "c1" "d1" "e1"
"f1" "g1"

It seems simple, ut it is driving me mad.
Thank you very much for your help.
Luca Laghi

On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 16:23 +0200, Luca Laghi wrote:
> Dear list members,
> I have created seven objects, from a to g, so that ls() gives me
> [1] "a" "b" "c" "d" "e"
"f" "g"
> 
> how can I automatically change their names in
> 
> "a1" "b1" "c1" "d1" "e1"
"f1" "g1"
> 
> It seems simple, ut it is driving me mad.
> Thank you very much for your help.
> Luca Laghi
Try this:
> ls()
character(0)


# Create the 7 objects
for (i in seq(7)) assign(letters[i], i)

> ls()
[1] "a" "b" "c" "d" "e"
"f" "g" "i"


# Just get the objects we want
MyObj <- ls(pattern = "^[a-g]$")

> MyObj
[1] "a" "b" "c" "d" "e"
"f" "g"


# Rename to new and delete old
for (i in MyObj)
{ 
  assign(paste(i, "1", sep = ""), get(i))      
  rm(list = i)
}

> ls()
[1] "a1"    "b1"    "c1"    "d1"   
"e1"    "f1"    "g1"    "i"
[9] "MyObj
 

See ?assign and ?get

You could encapsulate the above in a function, but need to be cautious
relative to environments and the old to new naming schema. 

HTH,

Marc Schwartz

On 8/3/2007 10:23 AM, Luca Laghi wrote:
> Dear list members,
> I have created seven objects, from a to g, so that ls() gives me
> [1] "a" "b" "c" "d" "e"
"f" "g"
> 
> how can I automatically change their names in
> 
> "a1" "b1" "c1" "d1" "e1"
"f1" "g1"
> 
> It seems simple, ut it is driving me mad.
R doesn't have a "rename" operation, so you need to copy the
objects and
then delete the original.  For example:

# create a vector of the names of your objects
namelist <- letters[1:7]

for (i in seq_along(namelist)) {
   oldname <- namelist[i]

   # compute a new name from the old one
   newname <- paste(oldname, "1", sep="")

   # create a variable with the new name
   assign(newname, get(oldname))

   # delete the old object
   rm(list=oldname)
}


The code above should work in simple cases where you run it in the 
console and it works on objects in the global workspace.  If you want to 
write a function to do this things get more complicated, because you 
want to make the assignment in the same place the function found the 
original.

There are quicker ways (using mget() and apply()), but they'd really 
just be doing the same as the above in a less clear way.

Duncan Murdoch