Building a list in a loop in R - getting item names correct

Question

I have a function which contains a loop over two lists and builds up some calculated data. I would like to return these data as a lists of lists, indexed by some value, but

Answer 1

To show that an explicit for loop is not required

unif_norm  <- replicate(5, list(uniform = runif(10),
  normal = rnorm(16)), simplify=F)

binomials <- lapply(seq_len(5)/10, function(prob) {
 list(binomial =  rbinom(n = 5 ,size = 8, prob = prob))})

biglist <- setNames(mapply(c, unif_norm, binomials, SIMPLIFY = F), 
                     paste0('item:',seq_along(unif_norm)))

In general if you go down the for loop path it is better to preassign the list beforehand. This is more memory efficient.

mybiglist <- vector('list', 5)
names(mybiglist) <- paste0('item:', seq_along(mybiglist))
for(i in seq_along(mybiglist)){
    a <- runif(10)
    b <- rnorm(16)
    c <- rbinom(8, 5, i/10)

    tmp <- list(uniform=a, normal=b, binomial=c)
    mybiglist[[i]] <- tmp
}