Creating a named list from two vectors (names, values)

Question

Is there a way to use mapply on two vectors to construct a named list? The first vector would be of type character and contain the names used for the list while

Answer 1

I share Ben's puzzlement about why you might want to do this, and his recommendation.

Just for curiosity's sake, there is a sort of "hidden" feature in mapply that will allow this:

x <- letters[1:2]
y <- 1:2
mapply(function(x,y) { y }, x, y, SIMPLIFY = FALSE,USE.NAMES = TRUE)
$a
[1] 1

$b
[1] 2

Noting that the documentation for USE.NAMES says:

USE.NAMES logical; use names if the first ... argument has names, or if it is a character vector, use that character vector as the names.

Answer 2

What I propose is made in 2 steps, and it's quite straightforward, so maybe it's easier to understand:

test_list <- list(1, 2)
names(test_list) <- c("foo", "bar")

What @ben-bolker proposes works, but just wanted to share an alternative, in case you prefer it.

Happy coding!

Answer 3

You can use setNames()

setNames(as.list(c(1, 2)), c("foo", "bar"))

(for a list) or

setNames(c(1, 2), c("foo", "bar"))

(for a vector)