CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rlist
Julien Navarre
Julien Navarre

Reputation: 7840

Prevent element renaming when unlist

I have a list of vectors and sub-lists and I would like to unlist the sub-lists to get a list of vectors only.

my.list <- list(a = 1, 
                li1 = list(b = 2, c = 3), 
                li2 = list(d = 4, e = 5))
> my.list
$a
[1] 1

$li1
$li1$b
[1] 2

$li1$c
[1] 3


$li2
$li2$d
[1] 4

$li2$e
[1] 5

> unlist(my.list, recursive = FALSE)
$a
[1] 1

$li1.b
[1] 2

$li1.c
[1] 3

$li2.d
[1] 4

$li2.e
[1] 5

The simple way is to use unlist with recursive = FALSE but as you can see sub-list names are appended to the new elements names. And if I use use.names = FALSE the entire element name is removed.

Is there a simple way to keep element names but remove appended alias ?

Thank for any help.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 427

Answers (1)

alexis_laz
alexis_laz

Reputation: 13122

You could, also, remove the "names" of sub-lists recursively and, then, unlist:

ff = function(x)
{
    if(is.list(x)) {
        names(x)[sapply(x, is.list)] = ""
        lapply(x, ff)
    } else return(x)
}
unlist(ff(my.list))
#a b c d e 
#1 2 3 4 5

And on a more nested "list":

my.list2 = list(a = 1, 
                li1 = list(b = 2, c = 3), 
                li2 = list(li2a = list(d = 4, e = 5), 
                           li2b = list(li2b1 = list(f = 6, g = 7), 
                                       li2b2 = list(h = 8),
                                       li2b3 = list(li2b3a = list(i = 9, j = 10, k = 11)))))

unlist(ff(my.list2))
# a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  i  j  k 
# 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions