Rename Columns of Data.frame in list

Question

I am trying to use lapply (and want the solution with lapply) to rename columns of a data.frame located in a list, but it\'s returning names, not the renamed data.frames:

Answer 1

We may need to return the object after naming it.

 li_2 <- lapply(seq_along(li), function(i) {
               colnames(li[[i]]) <- names(li)[i]
               li[[i]]})

Or this can be done with setNames

 li_2 <- lapply(names(li), function(x) setNames(li[[x]], x) )

Or we could use Map, which is a wrapper for mapply (that is a multivariate version of sapply). We apply the FUN to corresponding elements of each input.

 li_2 <- Map(setNames, li, names(li))

Here, we are changing the column names of each list element with corresponding names of the list element. If we are using anonymous function, it would be

 Map(function(x,y) setNames(x,y), li, names(li))