Populating a list with lists (replicate, lapply) - r

Question

How should I generate a list of lists of known size?
Currently I do it like that.
create_scout_bees <- function(search_space, num_scouts){
gen_bee <- function(unused, sear_spac){
create_random_bee(sear_spac)
}
bees <- lapply(1:num_scouts, gen_bee, search_space)
#bees <- replicate(num_scouts, create_random_bee(search_space))
cat('\nclass of bees is:',class(bees),'\n')
bees
}
where create_random_bee(sear_spac) returns return(list(vector=random_vector(search_space))). This seems to be too complicated. I found the replicate function (see comment in code). But it does not return the same thing. To be honest I'm not entirely sure what it returns.
The lapply option seems returns a list of lists
[[1]]
[[1]]$vector
[1] -3.772477 -4.178604
[[2]]
[[2]]$vector
[1] -1.237291 -2.430769
[[3]]
[[3]]$vector
[1] -2.211511 -1.352074
[[4]]
[[4]]$vector
[1] 4.102391 -1.437620
[[5]]
[[5]]$vector
[1] -0.1355444 -2.0270074
The replicate version returns a list
$vector
[1] 3.780779 3.588892
$vector
[1] -4.290371 4.098709
$vector
[1] 1.051525 -3.374406
$vector
[1] -0.4593861 -4.8412850
$vector
[1] 2.164383 -4.903347
I can index both returned values. But the second option seems to be just a list with 5 elements of type vector with the same key. When accessing by key it returns the first element.
How do you generate a list of lists of known size?

Answer 1

You can try
replicate(5, list(vector=rnorm(2)), simplify=FALSE)
# [[1]]
#[[1]]$vector
#[1] -1.5239454 -0.1326934
#[[2]]
#[[2]]$vector
#[1] -1.4369404 0.3701259
#[[3]]
#[[3]]$vector
#[1] 0.3251298 -1.4289498
#[[4]]
#[[4]]$vector
#[1] 0.8346002 -0.2974959
#[[5]]
#[[5]]$vector
#[1] 0.4581858 -0.8066517