Saving dataframe after every iteration [r] - r

Question

I'm trying to save a data frame after every iteration of this loop, while appending the data frame with the loop number. So, I'll be left with 5 data frames all with different names.
In my actual code, all the data frames will be different but for simplicity I've just shown one data frame here.
I've supplied some test code below.
testFunction <- function() {
for (i in 1:5) {
x <- data.frame(c(1:10), c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10), c(10:19))
name <- paste("name", i, sep = "_")
name <- x
}
}
The example data frames created would be named:
testFunction()
name_1
name_2
name_3
name_4
name_5
However, I'm only getting the final data frame "name_5" to save when the loop completes. My issue is I don't know how to save the ith version of the data frame without escaping from the loop.
Any suggestions on how I can solve this?
***** EDIT *****
I have my for loop inside a function, which might be why assign() is not working. I've appended my example above to show this.

Answer 1

Inside your loop, use assign():
for (i in 1:5) {
x <- data.frame(c(1:10), c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10), c(10:19))
assign( paste("name", i, sep = "_") , x)
}
Edit:
As you now want to do this in a function, you would have to specify the environment to assign to. I suspect you want the global environment:
testFunction <- function() {
for (i in 1:5) {
x <- data.frame(c(1:10), c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10), c(10:19))
assign( paste("name", i, sep = "_") , x , envir = globalenv() )
}
}
Please be warned that it is not good practice to write a function that edits the enclosing environment. You'd be better off just returning a named list of your data frames, e.g. like so:
testFunction_2 <- function() {
out_list <- vector(mode = "list", length = 5)
for (i in 1:5) {
x <- data.frame(c(1:10), c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10), c(10:19))
out_list[[i]] <- x
names(out_list)[i] <- paste("name", i, sep = "_")
}
return(out_list)
}