Access variable dataframe in R loop - r

Question

If I am working with dataframes in a loop, how can I use a variable data frame name (and additionally, variable column names) to access data frame contents?
dfnames <- c("df1","df2")
df1 <- df2 <- data.frame(X = sample(1:10),Y = sample(c("yes", "no"), 10, replace = TRUE))
for (i in seq_along(dfnames)){
curr.dfname <- dfnames[i]
#how can I do this:
curr.dfname$X <- 42:52
#...this
dfnames[i]$X <- 42:52
#or even this doubly variable call
for (j in 1_seq_along(colnames(curr.dfname)){
curr.dfname$[colnames(temp[j])] <- 42:52
}
}

Answer 1

You can use get() to return a variable reference based on a string of its name:
> x <- 1:10
> get("x")
[1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
So, yes, you could iterate through dfnames like:
dfnames <- c("df1","df2")
df1 <- df2 <- data.frame(X = sample(1:10), Y = sample(c("yes", "no"), 10, replace = TRUE))
for (cur.dfname in dfnames)
{
cur.df <- get(cur.dfname)
# for a fixed column name
cur.df$X <- 42:52
# iterating through column names as well
for (j in colnames(cur.df))
{
cur.df[, j] <- 42:52
}
}
I really think that this is gonna be a painful approach, though. As the commenters say, if you can get the data frames into a list and then iterate through that, it'll probably perform better and be more readable. Unfortunately, get() isn't vectorised as far as I'm aware, so if you only have a string list of data frame names, you'll have to iterate through that to get a data frame list:
# build data frame list
df.list <- list()
for (i in 1:length(dfnames))
{
df.list[[i]] <- get(dfnames[i])
}
# iterate through data frames
for (cur.df in df.list)
{
cur.df$X <- 42:52
}
Hope that helps!
2018 Update: I probably wouldn't do something like this anymore. Instead, I'd put the data frames in a list and then use purrr:map(), or, the base equivalent, lapply():
library(tidyverse)
stuff_to_do = function(mydata) {
mydata$somecol = 42:52
# … anything else I want to do to the current data frame
mydata # return it
}
df_list = list(df1, df2)
map(df_list, stuff_to_do)
This brings back a list of modified data frames (although you can use variants of map(), map_dfr() and map_dfc(), to automatically bind the list of processed data frames row-wise or column-wise respectively. The former uses column names to join, rather than column positions, and it can also add an ID column using the .id argument and the names of the input list. So it comes with some nice added functionality over lapply()!