Export a list into a CSV or TXT file in R
I understand that we cannot export a table if one of its elements is a list. I got a list in R and I want to export it into a CSV or TXT file. Here is the error message that I get when I execute this write.table
command :
write.table(mylist,"test.txt",sep=";")
Error in .External2(C_writetable, x, file, nrow(x), p, rnames, sep, eol, :
unimplemented type 'list' in 'EncodeElement'
Here is the first element of my list :
$f10010_1
$f10010_1$mots
[1] X16 ESPRESSO TDISC TASSIMO
[5] CARTE NOIRE A LAVAZZA
[9] MALONGO MIO MODO 123
[13] CAPSULES DOSES 78G LONG
[17] SPRESSO CAFE 120G CLASSIC
[21] 104G 128G AROMATIQUE INTENSE
[25] 112G 156G 520G 5X16
[29] PROMO TRIPACK X24 126G
[33] 16 4X16 APPASSIONATAMENTE APPASSIONATEMENTE
[37] BRESIL CAPSUL COLOMBIE CORSE
[41] CREMOSAMENTE DELICATI DELIZIOSAMENTE DIVINAMENTE
[45] DOLCEMENTE EQI GRAND GRANDE
[49] GT GUATEMALA HAITI INTENSAMENTE
[53] ITALIAN MAGICAMENTE MERE MOKA78G
[57] PETITS PRODUCT PURSMATIN RESERVE
[61] RISTRETO SOAVEMENTE STYLE X36
64 Levels: 104G 112G 120G 123 126G 128G 156G 16 4X16 520G 5X16 78G ... X36
$f10010_1$nblabel
[1] 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32
[27] 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32
[53] 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32
Levels: 32
$f10010_1$Freq
[1] 18 16 16 15 14 14 9 9 9 9 9 8 8 8 7 7 7 6 5 5 3 3 3 3 2 2
[27] 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
[53] 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
$f10010_1$pct
[1] 0.56250 0.50000 0.50000 0.46875 0.43750 0.43750 0.28125 0.28125 0.28125
[10] 0.28125 0.28125 0.25000 0.25000 0.25000 0.21875 0.21875 0.21875 0.18750
[19] 0.15625 0.15625 0.09375 0.09375 0.09375 0.09375 0.06250 0.06250 0.06250
[28] 0.06250 0.06250 0.06250 0.06250 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125
[37] 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125
[46] 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125
[55] 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125 0.03125
[64] 0.03125
I think the most straightforward way to do this is using capture.output
, thus;
capture.output(summary(mylist), file = "My New File.txt")
Easy!
So essentially you have a list of lists, with mylist being the name of the main list and the first element being $f10010_1
which is printed out (and which contains 4 more lists).
I think the easiest way to do this is to use lapply
with the addition of dataframe
(assuming that each list inside each element of the main list (like the lists in $f10010_1
) has the same length):
lapply(mylist, function(x) write.table( data.frame(x), 'test.csv' , append= T, sep=',' ))
The above will convert $f10010_1
into a dataframe then do the same with every other element and append one below the other in 'test.csv'
You can also type ?write.table
on your console to check what other arguments you need to pass when you write the table to a csv file e.g. whether you need row names or column names etc.