modifyList Recursively Modify Elements of a List

Description

Modifies a possibly nested list recursively by changing a subset of elements at each level to match a second list.

Usage

modifyList(x, val, keep.null = FALSE)

Arguments

x	A named list, possibly empty.
val	A named list with components to replace corresponding components in x.
keep.null	If TRUE, NULL elements in val become NULL elements in x. Otherwise, the corresponding element, if present, is deleted from x.

Value

A modified version of x, with the modifications determined as follows (here, list elements are identified by their names). Elements in val which are missing from x are added to x. For elements that are common to both but are not both lists themselves, the component in x is replaced (or possibly deleted, depending on the value of keep.null) by the one in val. For common elements that are in both lists, x[[name]] is replaced by modifyList(x[[name]], val[[name]]).

Author(s)

Deepayan Sarkar [email protected]

Examples

foo <- list(a = 1, b = list(c = "a", d = FALSE))
bar <- modifyList(foo, list(e = 2, b = list(d = TRUE)))
str(foo)
str(bar)