R help - Feb 2011 - Creating objects (data.frames) with names stored in character vector

Hello,

I'm fairly new to R.  I'm a chemist, not a programmer so please bear
with me.

I have a large data.frame that I want to break down (subset) into smaller
data.frames for analysis.  I would like to give the data.frames descriptive
names which I have stored in a character vector.  My original thought was that I
want the subsets to show up as individual objects, but haveing them stored in a
list is fine (maybe better).

I can create a list of subsetted data.frames like this:
>Lst = list(subset1 = (subset (blablabla)), subset2 = (subset(blabla)))
but I have to provide the component names (subset1, subset2) manually.

I would like to pull the component names from an existing character vector, but
so far my attempts have failed.

Any advice is appreciated, even if the advice is "don't do that."

Thank you,

Kent

On Feb 24, 2011, at 3:38 PM, Kent Alleman wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm fairly new to R.  I'm a chemist, not a programmer so please
bear
> with me.
>
> I have a large data.frame that I want to break down (subset) into  
> smaller data.frames for analysis.  I would like to give the  
> data.frames descriptive names which I have stored in a character  
> vector.  My original thought was that I want the subsets to show up  
> as individual objects, but haveing them stored in a list is fine  
> (maybe better).
>
> I can create a list of subsetted data.frames like this:
>
>> Lst = list(subset1 = (subset (blablabla)), subset2 =  
>> (subset(blabla)))
> but I have to provide the component names (subset1, subset2) manually.
lstnames <- paste("subset", 1:2, sep="_")
names(Lst) <- lstnames
>
> I would like to pull the component names from an existing character  
> vector, but so far my attempts have failed.
>
> Any advice is appreciated, even if the advice is "don't do
that."
>
> Thank you,
>
> Kent
>
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David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT