They aren't being stored, they are being generated on the fly. You can create the same names using make.names()
example.names <- c("con1-1-masked-bottom-green.tsv", "con1-1-masked-bottom-red.tsv", "con1-1-masked-top-green.tsv", "con1-1-masked-top-red.tsv") example.list <- strsplit(example.names, "-") as.data.frame(example.list) > make.names(example.list) [1] "c..con1....1....masked....bottom....green.tsv.." "c..con1....1....masked....bottom....red.tsv.." [3] "c..con1....1....masked....top....green.tsv.." "c..con1....1....masked....top....red.tsv.." But you'll probably get a more usable result if you set names explicitly, for instance: names(example.list) <- example.names as.data.frame(example.list) Note that the characters that are not legal in column names are changed for you. You can disable that behavior with check.names=FALSE if you use data.frame() rather than as.data.frame(). Sarah On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 4:21 PM, Ed Siefker <ebs15...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm doing some string manipulation on a vector of file names, and noticed > something curious. When I strsplit the vector, I get a list of > character vectors. > The list is numbered, as lists are. When I cast that list as a data > frame with 'as.data.frame()', the resulting columns have names derived > from the original filenames. > > Example code is below. My question is, where are these names stored > in the list? Are there methods that can access this from the list? > Is there a way to preserve them verbatim? Thanks > -Ed > >> example.names > [1] "con1-1-masked-bottom-green.tsv" "con1-1-masked-bottom-red.tsv" > [3] "con1-1-masked-top-green.tsv" "con1-1-masked-top-red.tsv" >> example.list <- strsplit(example.names, "-") >> example.list > [[1]] > [1] "con1" "1" "masked" "bottom" "green.tsv" > > [[2]] > [1] "con1" "1" "masked" "bottom" "red.tsv" > > [[3]] > [1] "con1" "1" "masked" "top" "green.tsv" > > [[4]] > [1] "con1" "1" "masked" "top" "red.tsv" > >> example.df <- as.data.frame(example.list) >> example.df > c..con1....1....masked....bottom....green.tsv.. > 1 con1 > 2 1 > 3 masked > 4 bottom > 5 green.tsv > c..con1....1....masked....bottom....red.tsv.. > 1 con1 > 2 1 > 3 masked > 4 bottom > 5 red.tsv > c..con1....1....masked....top....green.tsv.. > 1 con1 > 2 1 > 3 masked > 4 top > 5 green.tsv > c..con1....1....masked....top....red.tsv.. > 1 con1 > 2 1 > 3 masked > 4 top > 5 red.tsv > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.