r - Assign data frame name to list elements using name vector

Question

I have a data frame, 'mydata':

head(mydata)

ID      MDC
000001  21A
000002  5
000003  8
...

I've split my data frame by one of it's column values, namely 'MDC'. This created a list, subdivided into further lists by the column value 'MDC':

mylist <- split(mydata, mydata$MDC, drop=TRUE)
summary(mylist)

    Length Class      Mode
0   75     data.frame list
1   75     data.frame list
10  75     data.frame list
11  75     data.frame list
12  75     data.frame list
21A 75     data.frame list
...

I now want to create a data frame for each MDC with the corresponding name, e.g. 'MDC1'. How can I assign the MDC values to the list elements?

Thanks

Answer 1

It seems like this should work

MDC <- paste0("MDC", sort(unique(mydata$MDC)))
names(mylist) <- MDC
list2env(mylist, .GlobalEnv)
ls() # Checking environment
## [1] "MDC"    "MDC21A" "MDC5"   "MDC8"   "mydata" "mylist"

Edit: Per @flodel's comment- In case you want to make further operations on these data frames, you shouldn't copy them into the global environment. You should leave them in mylist and do all your operation on that list using functions such as lapply and rapply