Question

Starting with an empty dataframe, I need to fill the dataframe as follows: A for loop generates a fixed number of values in each iteration, and I need to add a new column with the values in that list, and giving the column a unique name, col_i (where i is the ith iteration of the loop).

How can this (seemingly simple task) be done?

Answer 1

The most efficient way to build a dataframe piecewise is to store your parts in a pre-allocated list, then put them together afterwards.

For example:

num.iters <- 10
l <- vector('list', num.iters) 
for (i in 1:num.iters) {
     l[[i]] <- rnorm(3)                       # the column data
     names(l)[i] <- paste('Col', i, sep='.')  # the column name 
} 
do.call(cbind, l)  # ... if your cols are the same datatype and you want a matrix
data.frame(l)      # otherwise