Loop through each variable and collect output R - r

Question

I have a data frame that looks like this. names and number of columns will NOT be consistent (sometimes 'C' will not be present, other times "D', 'E', 'F' may be present, etc.)
# name and number of columns varies...so need flexible process
A <- c(1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 4, 3, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 4, 8)
B <- c(5, 6, 6, 5, 3, 7, 2, 1, 1, 2, 7, 4, 7, 8, 5, 7, 6, 6, 4, 7)
C <- c(9, 1, 2, 2, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 89, 9, 7, 6, 5, 6, 8, 9 , 67, 6)
ABC <- data.frame(A, B, C)
I want to loop through each variable and collect various information. This is a simple example, but what I am doing will be more complicated. I say that so that somebody doesn't just recommend some sort of summary() type solution.
maximum_value <- max(A)
mean_value <- mean(A)
# lots of other calculations for A
ID = 'A'
tempA <- data.frame(ID, maximum_value, mean_value)
maximum_value <- max(B)
mean_value <- mean(B)
# lots of other calculations for B
ID = 'B'
tempB <- data.frame(ID, maximum_value, mean_value)
maximum_value <- max(C)
mean_value <- mean(C)
# lots of other calculations for C
ID = 'C'
tempC <- data.frame(ID, maximum_value, mean_value)
output <- rbind(tempA, tempB, tempC)
Here is my attempt at creating a loop to go through the variables one by one and aggregate output. I can't figure out how to get [i] to point at an individual column of the data frame ABC.
# initialize data frame
data__ <- data.frame(ID__ = as.character(),
max__ = as.numeric(),
mean__ = as.numeric())
# loop through A, then B, then C
for(i in A:C) {
ID__ <- '[i]'
max__ <- maximum[i]
mean__ <- mean[i]
data__temp <- (ID__, max__, mean__)
data__ <- rbind(data__, data__temp)
}
If I were doing this in SAS, I would use a select into within proc sql to create a list of the variable names, then write an array, then i could loop through them that way, but there's something I'm missing here.
How would I tell R to do this process for each variable in the data frame?

Answer 1

If you use the tidyverse dplyr and tidyr package, you can do
library(tidyr)
ABC %>% gather(ID, value) %>% group_by(ID) %>% summarize_all(funs(mean, max))
or
ABC %>% gather(ID, value) %>% group_by(ID) %>%
summarize(maximum_value = max(value), mean_value=mean(value))
If you'd rather use base functions and there are a lot of "weird" functions, you can use purrr's map_df function
library(purrr)
map2_df(ABC, names(ABC), function(a, n) {
data_frame(ID=n, max_val=max(a), mean_val=mean(a))
})