R: Unwanted quotation marks in tibble::lst names - r

Question

I only recently learned of tibble::lst, which creates a list object but automatically names list items. I'm using this as a shortcut within a %>% workflow that makes use of the names as the .id argument in map_dfr, so the automatic naming is really helpful.
However, the names are coming in with quotation marks around them. I noticed this because they awkwardly printed in axis tick labels in a ggplot, i.e. I had a label saying "Hartford" instead of Hartford.
I looked through issues on the tidyverse/tibble github but didn't find anything. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?
library(dplyr)
library(purrr)
cities <- lst("New Haven", "Bridgeport", "Hartford")
cities
#> $`"New Haven"`
#> [1] "New Haven"
#>
#> $`"Bridgeport"`
#> [1] "Bridgeport"
#>
#> $`"Hartford"`
#> [1] "Hartford"
cities %>%
map_dfr(~tibble(dummy = rnorm(1)), .id = "city")
#> # A tibble: 3 x 2
#> city dummy
#> <chr> <dbl>
#> 1 "\"New Haven\"" -0.956
#> 2 "\"Bridgeport\"" 0.533
#> 3 "\"Hartford\"" -0.0553
At first I thought it might be to escape the space in "New Haven", but it happens with single characters as well:
lst("a", "b", "c")
#> $`"a"`
#> [1] "a"
#>
#> $`"b"`
#> [1] "b"
#>
#> $`"c"`
#> [1] "c"
It works as I expect when I provide names, but that defeats this advantage that lst has over the base list.
lst(a = "a", b = "b", c = "c")
#> $a
#> [1] "a"
#>
#> $b
#> [1] "b"
#>
#> $c
#> [1] "c"
Pretty sure I'm up to date on tidyverse-related packages, but here's my session info just in case:
sessionInfo()
#> R version 3.5.1 (2018-07-02)
#> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
#> Running under: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
#>
#> Matrix products: default
#> BLAS: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib
#> LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib
#>
#> locale:
#> [1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8
#>
#> attached base packages:
#> [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
#>
#> other attached packages:
#> [1] purrr_0.2.5 dplyr_0.7.6
#>
#> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
#> [1] Rcpp_0.12.18 knitr_1.20 bindr_0.1.1 magrittr_1.5
#> [5] tidyselect_0.2.4 R6_2.2.2 rlang_0.2.2 fansi_0.3.0
#> [9] stringr_1.3.1 tools_3.5.1 utf8_1.1.4 cli_1.0.0
#> [13] htmltools_0.3.6 yaml_2.2.0 assertthat_0.2.0 rprojroot_1.3-2
#> [17] digest_0.6.16 tibble_1.4.2 crayon_1.3.4 bindrcpp_0.2.2
#> [21] glue_1.3.0 evaluate_0.11 rmarkdown_1.10 stringi_1.2.4
#> [25] compiler_3.5.1 pillar_1.3.0 backports_1.1.2 pkgconfig_2.0.2

Answer 1

lst() is really meant to be used with variables. Such as
xa<-"a"
xb<-"b"
xc<-"c"
lst(xa,xb,xc)
# $`xa`
# [1] "a"
# $xb
# [1] "b"
# $xc
# [1] "c"
It doesn't play well with literal, unnamed values. It takes the name of the element from the unevaluated expression you pass in. So if you pass in a character value, that evaluated expression still has the quotes. I think you just want list() here. Possibly with names:
cities <- list("New Haven", "Bridgeport", "Hartford")
names(cities)<-unname(cities)
cities
# $`New Haven`
# [1] "New Haven"
# $Bridgeport
# [1] "Bridgeport"
# $Hartford
# [1] "Hartford"
or just write your own function
nlist <- function(...) {
setNames(list(...), c(...))
}
cities <- nlist("New Haven", "Bridgeport", "Hartford")