Import directory of docx files - r

Question

I have a directory with .docx files that I want to import via textreadr's read_docx function.
First I set the working directory and create list of files:
setwd("C:/R")
files <- list.files("C:/R", pattern = "\\.docx")
Now I want to iterate through the list and import every file individually, named data_"file":
for (file in files) {
assign("data_", file, sep = "") <- read_docx("file")
}
Optionally, I tried creating a list of lists:
data_list <- lapply(files, function(v){
read_docx("v")
})
Both variants don't work and I'm not sure what I do wrong.

Answer 1

Maybe the full path is not present, we can add
files <- list.files("C:/R", pattern = "\\.docx", full.names = TRUE)
The issue is that v or file is quoted i.e. "" i.e. it is trying to read a string "v" instead of the value. Thus, the code in the OP's post can be corrected to
data_list <- lapply(files, function(v){
read_docx(v)
})
or in the for loop
for (file in files) {
assign(paste0("data_", file, sep = ""), read_docx(file))
}
Also, as noted in the comments, if there are 1000 files, assign creates 1000 new objects which is a bit messy when we want to gather all of them again. Instead, as in the lapply, which creates a single list, the output from for loop can be store in a list
data_list2 <- vector('list', length(files))
names(data_list2) <- files
for(file in files) {
data_list2[[file]] <- read_docx(file)
}

Answer 2

First off, you need to grab the full path instead of just the filenames from list.files:
files <- list.files("C:/R", pattern = "\\.docx$", full.names = TRUE)
Then the lapply solution works if you pass the parameter v to read_docx instead of a literal string "v". You don’t even need the nested function:
data_list <- lapply(files, read_docx)
As an aside, there’s no need for setwd in your code, and its use is strongly discouraged.
Furthermore, using the assign function as in your code doesn’t work and even after fixing the syntax, this use is simply completely inappropriate: at best it is a hack that approximates the functionality of lists, but badly. The correct solution, 10 times out of 10, is to use a named list or vector in its place.