How to create a list with names but no entries in R/Splus?

Question

I'd like to set up a list with named entries whose values are left uninitialized (I plan to add stuff to them later). How do people generally do this? I've done:

mylist.names <- c("a", "b", "c") mylist <- as.list(rep(NA, length(mylist.names))) names(mylist) <- mylist.names 

but this seems kind of hacky. There has to be a more standard way of doing this...right?

Answer 1

I would do it like this:

mylist.names <- c("a", "b", "c") mylist <- vector("list", length(mylist.names)) names(mylist) <- mylist.names 

Answer 2

A little bit shorter version than Thilo :)

mylist <- sapply(mylist.names,function(x) NULL)