Appending to an R List one by one - r

Question

Let's say I have data like:
> data[295:300,]
Date sulfate nitrate ID
295 2003-10-22 NA NA 1
296 2003-10-23 NA NA 1
297 2003-10-24 3.47 0.363 1
298 2003-10-25 NA NA 1
299 2003-10-26 NA NA 1
300 2003-10-27 NA NA 1
Now I would like to add all the nitrate values into a new list/vector. I'm using the following code:
i <- 1
my_list <- c()
for(val in data)
{
my_list[i] <- val
i <- i + 1
}
But this is what happens:
Warning message:
In x[i] <- val :
number of items to replace is not a multiple of replacement length
> i
[1] 2
> x
[1] NA
Where am I going wrong? The data is part of a Coursera R Programming coursework. I can assure you that this is not an assignment/quiz. I have been trying to understand what is the best way append elements into a list with a loop? I have not proceeded to the lapply or sapply part of the coursework, so thinking about workarounds.
Thanks in advance.
If it's a duplicate question, please direct me to it.

Answer 1

As we mention in the comments, you are not looping over the rows of your data frame, but the columns (also sometimes variables). Hence, loop over data$nitrate.
i <- 1
my_list <- c()
for(val in data$nitrate)
{
my_list[i] <- val
i <- i + 1
}
Now, instead of looping over your values, a better way is to use that you want the new vector and the old data to have the same index, so loop over the index i. How do you tell R how many indexes there are? Here you have several choices again: 1:nrow(data), 1:length(data$nitrate) and several other ways. Below I have given you a few examples of how to extract from the data frame.
my_vector <- c()
for(i in 1:nrow(data)){
my_vector[i] <- data$nitrate[i] ## Version 1 of extracting from data.frame
my_vector[i] <- data[i,"nitrate"] ## Version 2: [row,column name]
my_vector[i] <- data[i,3] ## Version 3: [row,column number]
}
My suggestion: Rather than calling the collection a list, call it a vector, since that is what it is. Vectors and lists behave a little differently in R.
Of course, in reality you don't want to get the data out one by one. A much more efficient way of getting your data out is
my_vector2 <- data$nitrate