R (purrr) flatten list of named lists to list and keep names

Question

Maybe I'm missing something obvious but trying to flatten a list of named lists of named lists in R (may even be more nested) into eventually one flat list. purrr and rlist seem to have tools for that. How can I achieve that names of sublists become name precrypts of flattened result list, eg list1.blist.a in purrr ? My actual list is more deeply nested with varying number of levels and repeating names on different levels. In the end I perform purrr::map_df(final_list, bind_rows) and this seems to drop all duplicate names (and even if it didn't I don't know from which branch the original duplicate name comes from). I can do it with rlist but I had hoped for a tidyverse solution (nothing against fantastic rlist but many already have tidyverse installed).

EDIT:

Also note that rlist::list.flatten() will always remove all levels but the top while purrr::flatten() drops levels one at a time which may sometimes be what you need. You could achieve the same by nesting purrr::map(.x, .f = rlist::list.flatten) as often as you require but it's cumbersome and not beautiful/readable.

alist <- list(list1 = list(a = 1, b = 2, blist = list(a = 3, b = 4)),
              list2 = list(a = 1, b = 2, blist = list(a = 3, b = 4)))
str(alist)

List of 2
 $ list1:List of 3
  ..$ a    : num 1
  ..$ b    : num 2
  ..$ blist:List of 2
  .. ..$ a: num 3
  .. ..$ b: num 4
 $ list2:List of 3
  ..$ a    : num 1
  ..$ b    : num 2
  ..$ blist:List of 2
  .. ..$ a: num 3
  .. ..$ b: num 4

alist_flat <- purrr::map(alist, purrr::flatten)
str(alist_flat)

List of 2
 $ list1:List of 4
  ..$ a: num 1
  ..$ b: num 2
  ..$ a: num 3
  ..$ b: num 4
 $ list2:List of 4
  ..$ a: num 1
  ..$ b: num 2
  ..$ a: num 3
  ..$ b: num 4

alist_flattest <- purrr::flatten(alist_flat)
str(alist_flattest)

List of 8
 $ a: num 1
 $ b: num 2
 $ a: num 3
 $ b: num 4
 $ a: num 1
 $ b: num 2
 $ a: num 3
 $ b: num 4

# works with rlist
alist_flat_names <- map(alist, rlist::list.flatten, use.names = TRUE)
str(alist_flat_names)

List of 2
 $ list1:List of 4
  ..$ a      : num 1
  ..$ b      : num 2
  ..$ blist.a: num 3
  ..$ blist.b: num 4
 $ list2:List of 4
  ..$ a      : num 1
  ..$ b      : num 2
  ..$ blist.a: num 3
  ..$ blist.b: num 4

alist_flattest_names <- rlist::list.flatten(alist_flat_names, use.names = TRUE)
str(alist_flattest_names)

List of 8
 $ list1.a      : num 1
 $ list1.b      : num 2
 $ list1.blist.a: num 3
 $ list1.blist.b: num 4
 $ list2.a      : num 1
 $ list2.b      : num 2
 $ list2.blist.a: num 3
 $ list2.blist.b: num 4

Answer 1

I looked at the source for rlist::list.flatten() and copied the source into a new function to avoid that dependency.

my_flatten <- function (x, use.names = TRUE, classes = "ANY") 
{
  #' Source taken from rlist::list.flatten
  len <- sum(rapply(x, function(x) 1L, classes = classes))
  y <- vector("list", len)
  i <- 0L
  items <- rapply(x, function(x) {
    i <<- i + 1L
    y[[i]] <<- x
    TRUE
  }, classes = classes)
  if (use.names && !is.null(nm <- names(items))) 
    names(y) <- nm
  y
}

alist <- list(list1 = list(a = 1, b = 2, blist = list(a = 3, b = 4)),
              list2 = list(a = 1, b = 2, blist = list(a = 3, b = 4)))


flat_list <- my_flatten(alist)

str(flat_list)

---

Result:

List of 8
 $ list1.a      : num 1
 $ list1.b      : num 2
 $ list1.blist.a: num 3
 $ list1.blist.b: num 4
 $ list2.a      : num 1
 $ list2.b      : num 2
 $ list2.blist.a: num 3
 $ list2.blist.b: num 4

Answer 2

unlist fully flattens a list into a named vector with the names you seem to want:

alist <- list(list1 = list(a = 1, b = 2, blist = list(a = 3, b = 4)),
              list2 = list(a = 1, b = 2, blist = list(a = 3, b = 4)))

> unlist(alist)
      list1.a       list1.b list1.blist.a list1.blist.b       list2.a 
            1             2             3             4             1 
      list2.b list2.blist.a list2.blist.b 
            2             3             4 

Then its one step to build that back to a named list. So my function would be:

splat_to_list = function(x){
  as.list(unlist(x))
}

Then:

> str(splat_to_list(alist))
List of 8
 $ list1.a      : num 1
 $ list1.b      : num 2
 $ list1.blist.a: num 3
 $ list1.blist.b: num 4
 $ list2.a      : num 1
 $ list2.b      : num 2
 $ list2.blist.a: num 3
 $ list2.blist.b: num 4

is identical to my_flatten in a previous answer.

Note it uses only base R functions, and there have been changes to purrr recently such as deprecating development of flatten , so old code is going to break.