What are Lists in R?

Lists are objects that contain elements of different types, such as:

  • numbers
  • strings
  • vectors
  • matrices
  • dataframes
  • functions
  • nested listslists with other lists inside them

These can be created by using the list() function.

Syntax

Note that these attributes attr1 and attr2 are the components of data structures such as numbers, strings, vectors, etc.

my_list <- list(attr1, attr2 ...)

Creating a List

This is an example of how to create a list that contains elements like strings, numbers, vectors, and a logical value.

Illustration of below Example

Example

The code below creates a list and prints each element of the list with the corresponding index.

#Create a list contain strings, numbers, vectors and a logical values
List_data <- list("Red", "Green", c(21,32, 11), TRUE, 51.23, 119.1)
print(List_data)

1. Modifying a component

We can modify a component in a list through reassignment by accessing a specific index and assigning this index with another new value.

//modifying the results
List_data[["Red"]] <- "Blue";

2. Adding a component

Adding a new component to the list is simple. Here is the basic syntax:

// adding new value 
List_data[["White"]] <- FALSE

3. Deleting a component

Assigning FALSE to a specific index or value, it results in deletion.

//
List_data[["Red"]] <- NULL