Creating data frames dynamically using items of loop in R

Question

I have a for loop as

for(i in c("a","b","c","d"))
{
    as.name(paste("df",i,sep=""))= mydataframe
}

mydataframe is a data frame and I want to create data frames dfa,dfb,dfc and dfd using this loop.

The as.name(paste("df",i,sep="")) does not work here. I do not want to create a list that has the 4 data frames.

Can I directly create 4 data frames from this loop?

This is a bad design pattern in R. It's better to work with a list of data.frames. You can much more easily work with data in a list rather than creating a bunch of similarly named variables in your global environment. — MrFlick
– MrFlick, Commented Mar 12, 2019 at 2:43
Possible duplicate: stackoverflow.com/questions/7914568/r-create-variables-in-loop — MrFlick
– MrFlick, Commented Mar 12, 2019 at 2:43
Another possible duplicate: stackoverflow.com/questions/16566799/… — MrFlick
– MrFlick, Commented Mar 12, 2019 at 2:45

Frans Rodenburg · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-12 02:47:17Z

1

You can do this using assign. Although in general, you are better off using lists.

Using your example:

for(i in letters[1:4]){
  assign(paste0("df", i), mydataframe)
}

Note that this will simply create the same object 4 times, unless you change what mydataframe is inside the loop.

answered Mar 12, 2019 at 2:47

Frans Rodenburg

5518 silver badges20 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Answer 1