How can I define multiple data frames in a for loop?

Question

For example say I have some data frame, DF.

DF has a column called "Target" and it consists of factor variable target names such as "A", "B", "C" , etc. For simplification just assume it has only those three.

I want to define three new data frames,

for example if I did

for(i in levels(DF$Target)){
Dat.i=Dat%>%
filter(Target==i)
}

It would run three times but the final result would still be a single data frame, Dat.i , with target=C.

I want there to be three new data frames literally called Dat.A, Dat.B and Dat.C, each corresponding to the the specific target. not Dat.i.

How can this be done?

you can use `split`, `split(DF, DF$Target)`. – Ronak Shah Oct 02 '19 at 05:53 — Ronak Shah, Oct 02 '19 at 05:53

fmarm · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-02T05:57:09.093

Not exactly what you want, but I think the best way to do this is to use a list

Dat <- list()
for(i in levels(DF$Target)){
  Dat[[i]] <- Dat%>%
           filter(Target==i)
}

Then you can access to your dataframes by doing Dat[["A"]],Dat[["B"]]...

If really you want to create different objects called Dat.A, Dat.B etc you can do this using

Dat <- list()
for(i in levels(DF$Target)){
  assign(paste0('Dat.',i), Dat%>%
                                filter(Target==i))
}

How can I define multiple data frames in a for loop?

1 Answers1