Clever Geek Handbook

Writing list contents to one file in R

I have a list of data summaries and I would like to write them all into one file, so I can have one text file containing the call output summary()

for each data frame.

I've tried this:

 dflist = lapply(1:4, function(x){df = data.frame(SID=paste("S",1:10,sep=""),matrix(runif(100),nrow=10,ncol=10))})
 sumlist  = lapply(dflist, function(df){summary(df)})
lapply(sumlist, function(i){write(i,"all_data_summary.txt",append=T )})

and that's kind of a job, but it writes the summary levels of each variable to a new line and doesn't include the variable name like:

S1     :1  
S10    :1  
S2     :1  
S3     :1  
S4     :1  
S5     :1  
(Other):4  
Min.   :0.1557  
1st Qu.:0.2284  
Median :0.5109  
Mean   :0.4707  
3rd Qu.:0.6471  
Max.   :0.9509  
NA
Min.   :0.05512  
1st Qu.:0.14310  
Median :0.20889  
Mean   :0.41891  
3rd Qu.:0.78261  
Max.   :0.97565  
NA
Min.   :0.01937  
1st Qu.:0.23876  
Median :0.57103  
Mean   :0.50806  
3rd Qu.:0.70491  
Max.   :0.95610  
NA
Min.   :0.0212  
1st Qu.:0.3445  
Median :0.5634  
Mean   :0.5554  
3rd Qu.:0.7484  
Max.   :0.9797

I would like the result to be like this:

List Element 1              
SID X1  X2  X3  X4
S1     :1   Min.   :0.1557      Min.   :0.05512     Min.   :0.01937     Min.   :0.0212  
S10    :1   1st Qu.:0.2284      1st Qu.:0.14310     1st Qu.:0.23876     1st Qu.:0.3445  
S2     :1   Median :0.5109      Median :0.20889     Median :0.57103     Median :0.5634  
S3     :1   Mean   :0.4707      Mean   :0.41891     Mean   :0.50806     Mean   :0.5554  
S4     :1   3rd Qu.:0.6471      3rd Qu.:0.78261     3rd Qu.:0.70491     3rd Qu.:0.7484  
S5     :1   Max.   :0.9509      Max.   :0.97565     Max.   :0.95610     Max.   :0.9797  
(Other):4               
List Element 2              
SID X1  X2  X3  X4
S1     :1   Min.   :0.1557      Min.   :0.05512     Min.   :0.01937     Min.   :0.0212  
S10    :1   1st Qu.:0.2284      1st Qu.:0.14310     1st Qu.:0.23876     1st Qu.:0.3445  
S2     :1   Median :0.5109      Median :0.20889     Median :0.57103     Median :0.5634  
S3     :1   Mean   :0.4707      Mean   :0.41891     Mean   :0.50806     Mean   :0.5554  
S4     :1   3rd Qu.:0.6471      3rd Qu.:0.78261     3rd Qu.:0.70491     3rd Qu.:0.7484  
S5     :1   Max.   :0.9509      Max.   :0.97565     Max.   :0.95610     Max.   :0.9797

Any ideas? Hurray, Davy.

+3


source to share


4 answers


Your suggested output looks like standard printed output, so you can just take the approach of capturing the printed output to a file. One easy way is to use the feature sink

and then lapply

print your resume. Or you can use capture.output

and save the results yourself (if you want to change or test something before saving).



If it doesn't, then take a look at the code for the print function that generates the output, and see if you can change that to put the information in a file. It looks like the pivot function on the dataframe is returning a symbol table, so print.table

would be a place to start.

+6


source


Skip the middle function and just do:

lapply(dflist, function(i){  capture.output( print(  summary(i) ) , 
                                    file="test.txt", append=TRUE)})


If you want all data to be on one line, set the parameters (width = 200) before running

+4


source


This will most likely cause the output to be canceled depending on the size of your window at the time, but it should work:

lapply(sumlist, function(i){out <- capture.output(print(i));cat(out,sep="\n",file="all_data_summary.txt",append=TRUE)}) -> .ans
+1


source


Have you considered converting the output to yaml and saving it to a text file?

  • It is human readable which is basically what you want (I suppose).
  • You can restore the original data structure from a text file.

I think the package is called yaml.

Of course, if you wanted the output in the exact format you provided, I couldn't agree more with the accepted answer.

0


source






More articles:


All Articles