On Nov 19, 2009, at 4:31 PM, Peng Yu wrote:

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 4:27 PM, Marc Schwartz <marc_schwa...@me.com> wrote:
On Nov 20, 2009, at 10:21 AM, Peng Yu wrote:

There are a few version of apply() (e.g., lapply(), sapply()). I'm
wondering if there is one that does not return anything but just
silently apply a function to the list argument.

For example, the plot function is applied to each element in 'alist'.
It is redundant to return anything from apply.

apply(alist,function(x){ plot each element of alist})



Just use a for() loop. If you are plotting things, the performance
bottleneck is not going to be in the loop.

Sometimes, we get too anal about avoiding for() loops.

Is there a way to get the name of the list in the loop body?

List=list(a='c',b='x',e='q')
for(x in List) { print(x) }
[1] "c"
[1] "x"
[1] "q"


Here is one approach to give you some insight into how to get the name (as opposed to the object itself) of an argument passed to a function:

MyList <- list(a = 1, b = 2, e = 3)

PlotFn <- function(x)
{
  # Get the name of the object passed as 'x' (eg. "MyList")
  Main <- deparse(substitute(x))

  for (i in seq(along = x))
  {
    plot(x[[i]], main = Main, ylab = names(x[i]))
  }
}

# Set to pause between each graphic
par(ask = TRUE)

PlotFn(MyList)

Take note that the main title for each graphic will be "MyList" and the y axis label for each, will be the name of each of the three components in MyList (eg. "a", "b" and "e")

HTH,

Marc Schwartz

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