Pass function through specific columns with lapply or for loop - r

Question

I have created a function that reorganizes a data frame into a list. I want to pass the function through all of the columns in the data frame (excluding the first 2 columns) however, the lapply function is returning strange results.
Here is a reproducible example:
names <- c("A", "B", "C", "D")
titles <- c("P", "S", "S", "P")
day1 <- c(1,0,1,0)
day2 <- c(0,0,1,1)
day3 <- c(1,1,0,0)
df <- data.frame(names, titles, day1, day2, day3)
ids <-df[,1:2]
obs <- df[,3:5]
I create the function which searches each "day column" for a 1 or a 0 and reports the "name" and "title" of a row with a 0 (it also removes duplicated values).
group_maker1 <- function(x){
g1 <- ids$names[obs[,x]> 0]
g2 <- ids$titles[obs[,x]> 0]
temp <- c(g1,g2)
temp <- temp[!duplicated(temp)]
paste(temp)
}
#test group_maker
> group_maker1(3)
[1] "A" "B" "P" "S"
In the actual data frame, there are many (>300) columns of "days". I want to pass this group_maker function through each column of "days" to the nth day.
I've tried running it through a for loop but the output doesn't seem to store anywhere
for(i in 1:nrow(df)) { # for-loop over columns
group_maker1 <- function(x){
g1 <- ids$names[obs[,x]> 0]
g2 <- ids$titles[obs[,x]> 0]
temp <- c(g1,g2)
temp <- temp[!duplicated(temp)]
paste(temp)
}
}
Alternatively, I tried lapply, which seems more promising as it gives an output, however "NA"'s are present, and its not reporting any of the "B" names
lapply(obs[,1:3], group_maker1)
$day1
[1] "A" "C" "NA" "P" "S"
$day2
[1] "A" "C" "NA" "P" "S"
$day3
[1] "A" "C" "NA" "P" "S"
This is the desired output, however the values within it are incorrect. I want it to return the output as seen above in the group_maker1(3) line but with the correct values for each column of days (i.e. no "NA's" and all of the values in that column)
Essentially, I want the loop/apply to pass the function through each column of "days" and provide an output of all the "names" and "titles" for each day in the form of a list.

Answer 1

Using your test data, we have
> group_maker1(1)
[1] "A" "C" "P" "S"
> group_maker1(2)
[1] "C" "D" "S" "P"
> group_maker1(3)
[1] "A" "B" "P" "S"
So, we can replicate using a for loop with
> for(i in 1:3) print(group_maker1(i))
[1] "A" "C" "P" "S"
[1] "C" "D" "S" "P"
[1] "A" "B" "P" "S"
or using lapply with
> lapply(1:3, group_maker1)
[[1]]
[1] "A" "C" "P" "S"
[[2]]
[1] "C" "D" "S" "P"
[[3]]
[1] "A" "B" "P" "S"
In both cases, your attempt failed because of a simple typo.
Or, taking a completely different approach to avoid the explicit use of loops altogether
library(tidyverse)
df %>%
pivot_longer(
starts_with("day"),
names_to="col",
values_to="val"
) %>%
group_by(col) %>%
group_map(
function(.x, .y) {
z <- .x %>% filter(val > 0)
c(z %>% pull(names) %>% unique(), z %>% pull(titles) %>% unique())
}
)
[[1]]
[1] "A" "C" "P" "S"
[[2]]
[1] "C" "D" "S" "P"
[[3]]
[1] "A" "B" "P" "S"
This final option could be shorter if there were no need to deal with awkward input and output formats.