R Language Lists Convert a list to a vector while keeping empty list elements

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Example

When one wishes to convert a list to a vector or data.frame object empty elements are typically dropped.

This can be problematic which a list is created of a desired length are created with some empty values (e.g. a list with n elements is created to be added to an m x n matrix, data.frame, or data.table). It is possible to losslessly convert a list to a vector however, retaining empty elements:

res <- list(character(0), c("Luzhuang", "Laisu", "Peihui"), character(0), 
    c("Anjiangping", "Xinzhai", "Yongfeng"), character(0), character(0), 
    c("Puji", "Gaotun", "Banjingcun"), character(0), character(0), 
    character(0))
res
[[1]]
character(0)

[[2]]
[1] "Luzhuang" "Laisu"    "Peihui"  

[[3]]
character(0)

[[4]]
[1] "Anjiangping" "Xinzhai"     "Yongfeng"   

[[5]]
character(0)

[[6]]
character(0)

[[7]]
[1] "Puji"       "Gaotun"     "Banjingcun"

[[8]]
character(0)

[[9]]
character(0)

[[10]]
character(0)
res <- sapply(res, function(s) if (length(s) == 0) NA_character_ else paste(s, collapse = " "))
res
 [1] NA                             "Luzhuang Laisu Peihui"        NA                             "Anjiangping Xinzhai Yongfeng" NA      

 [6] NA                             "Puji Gaotun Banjingcun"       NA                             NA                             NA


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