R code: Dynamic Variables in a loop - r

Question

I'm facing a challenge in R. I'm writing a code that incorporates another code written in C++ called MHX.
MHX is used for chemical data analysis by inputting some concentrations, etc. The integration between R and MHX works fine. So I'm able to write my MHX code definitions in the form of cat(CODE HERE) then calling a bash command to run MHX from terminal.
Now the results from MHX are given as tab delimited data tables that I am able to read without a problem in R. The problem is that I use R to simulate a large number of MHX calculations using loops.
Hence the need to write dynamic variables and here were I'm stuck. Let me give you more information with examples of my R code:
for (i in 1:100) {
fin <- file.create("input/ex1") #MHX input file
fout <- file.create("output/ex1.out") #MHX output file
FNM <- paste0("table_data/pH", i, ".txt") #filename used inside MHX definition
file.create(FNM) #this is used to create FNM table in R
fXY <- file.create(paste0("table_data/ECOMXY", i, ".txt"))
ifelse (HERE SOME MATHEMATICAL DEFINITIONS OF SOME VARIABLES)
ksource(MHXCode) #THIS CALLS MY MHX CODE which is inside another R code called `MHXCode` using a custom function KSOURCE. No problem here.
Up to here I don't have major problems. Now I need to setup the dynamic variables:
First I am creating variables PHL1 to PHL100
assign(paste("PHL", i, sep=""), read.table(paste0("table_data/pH", i, ".txt") ,skip=0, sep="\t", head=TRUE, na.strings = "-Inf"))
Each PHL table contains two rows and about 20 columns. Now I am interested in creating data frames from the second row for each column. Take for example row number 1 which is called EMF, ideally I need to do the following for all tables from PHLto PHL100 which is very tedious:
EMFT <- cbind(PHL1$EMF[2], PHL2$EMF[2], PHL3$EMF[2], PHL4$EMF[2], PHL5$EMF[2], PHL6$EMF[2],PHL7$EMF[2], PHL8$EMF[2], PHL9$EMF[2], PHL10$EMF[2], ....... etc up to PHL100! )
I tried many things to achieve the above, but I was not successful, including:
XX <- assign(paste0("PHL", i, "$EMF[2]"), cat(paste0("PHL", i, "$EMF[2]")))
I will need to do the same for other variables in order to be able to create some complicated plots. I hope anyone would be able to help.
I must mention that the main problem with assign is that I get qouted names of variables hence cannot return their values. Also for cat, you cannot use it to return a value, you will get NULL in the example above. Simple I am stuck!!
Please help.

Answer 1

Thanks to Justin he gave me a clue to answer my question. Here is what I have done:
files <- list.files(path="table_data", pattern=".dat", full.names=T); files
FRM <- NULL
for (f in files){
dat <- read.table(f, skip=0, header=TRUE, sep="\t", na.strings="",quote="", colClasses="character")[2,]
note that the [2, ] argument means that you skip all lines except line number 2 while keeping header which exactly what I was looking for.
Now I can bind it all in one table for my plots.
FRM <- rbind(FRM, dat)
This is a short answer and I think it is neat, sorted!