splitting list elements expanding the list - r

Question

I'm doing some kind of optical character recognition and face the following issue. I store the glyphs in a list of binary matrices and they can be of different size, but their maximum possible width is wid = 3 columns (may be any defined constant, not just 3). In some cases after the first stage of processing I get data which look like this:
myll <- list(matrix(c(0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0), ncol = 2),
matrix(c(0), ncol = 1),
matrix(c(1, 1, 0), ncol = 3),
matrix(c(1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1), ncol = 7),
matrix(c(1, 1, 1, 1), ncol = 2))
# [[1]]
# [,1] [,2]
# [1,] 0 1
# [2,] 0 1
# [3,] 0 0
#
# [[2]]
# [,1]
# [1,] 0
#
# [[3]]
# [,1] [,2] [,3]
# [1,] 1 1 0
#
# [[4]]
# [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6] [,7]
# [1,] 1 1 1 0 0 0 1
# [2,] 0 1 0 1 0 0 1
# [3,] 1 1 1 1 0 0 1
#
# [[5]]
# [,1] [,2]
# [1,] 1 1
# [2,] 1 1
So, some glyphs may be not separated for some reasons. This happens only with glyphs of maximum possible width. Moreover, there may be some junk at the end of the matrix. I have to split them into matrices of width ncol = wid leaving the last piece (junk) as is. Then I store this matrices in separate elements of list to get the following output:
# [[1]]
# [,1] [,2]
# [1,] 0 1
# [2,] 0 1
# [3,] 0 0
#
# [[2]]
# [,1]
# [1,] 0
#
# [[3]]
# [,1] [,2] [,3]
# [1,] 1 1 0
#
# [[4]]
# [,1] [,2] [,3]
# [1,] 1 1 1
# [2,] 0 1 0
# [3,] 1 1 1
#
# [[5]]
# [,1] [,2] [,3]
# [1,] 0 0 0
# [2,] 1 0 0
# [3,] 1 0 0
#
# [[6]]
# [,1]
# [1,] 1
# [2,] 1
# [3,] 1
#
# [[7]]
# [,1] [,2]
# [1,] 1 1
# [2,] 1 1
At the moment I can make it with the help of this functions
checkGlyphs <- function(gl_m, wid = 3) {
if (ncol(gl_m) > wid)
return(list(gl_m[,1:wid], matrix(gl_m[,-(1:wid)], nrow = nrow(gl_m)))) else
return(gl_m)
}
separateGlyphs <- function(myll, wid = 3) {
require("magrittr")
presplit <- lapply(myll, checkGlyphs, wid)
total_new_length <-
presplit[unlist(lapply(presplit, is.list))] %>% lapply(length) %>% unlist() %>% sum() +
as.integer(!unlist(lapply(presplit, is.list))) %>% sum()
splitted <- vector("list", length = total_new_length)
spl_index <- 1
for (i in 1:length(presplit))
{
if (!is.list(presplit[[i]]))
{
splitted[[spl_index]] <- presplit[[i]]
spl_index <- spl_index + 1
} else
{
for (j in 1:length(presplit[[i]]))
{
splitted[[spl_index]] <- presplit[[i]][[j]]
spl_index <- spl_index + 1
}
}
}
if (any(lapply(splitted, ncol) > wid)) return(separateGlyphs(splitted, wid)) else
return(splitted)
}
But I believe there is more fast and convenient way to achieve the same result (without using for loops and this enlooped reassignment of elements and then recursion if needed O_o).
I will be thankful for any suggestions on the point or, alternatively, for recommending some OCR-packages for R.

Answer 1

This should do the trick, with the values in final being what you're after.
combined <- do.call(cbind, lapply(myll, unlist))
idx <- seq(1, ncol(combined), 2)
final <- do.call(list, lapply(idx, function(x) combined[, x:(x+1)]))