Splitting a set of vectors in a list (Solved )

My thanks to Henrique Dallazuanna and Phil Spector.
 Both solutions worked well.
 Phil suggested that an alterative to my function would
 be
 vect1 = sapply(mylist,'[[',1)
 and I see that Henrique used `[` in his solution.

 Can you point me to some documentation that discusses
 these usages. I have seen them before but I have never
 actually figured out how to use them.?

 Thanks.

 Problem and solutions
 ========================================================
 mylist <- list(aa=c("cat","peach" ), bb=c("dog",
 "apple", "iron"),
         cc = c("rabbit", "orange", "zinc", "silk"))
 myfun <- function(dff) dff[1]
 vect1  <- unlist(lapply(mylist, myfun))

 # Desired output
 t(cbind( c("cat" ,  "peach" , NA, NA), bbb  <- c("dog"
 ,  "apple" ,"iron", NA),
 ccb <- c("rabbit" ,"orange" ,"zinc" ,  "silk" )))

 # Phil Spector's approach
 mlen = max(sapply(mylist,length))
 eqlens = lapply(mylist,function(x)if(length(x) < mlen)

 c(x,rep('',mlen-length(x))) else x)
 do.call(rbind,eqlens)

 #       "Henrique Dallazuanna" <wwwhsd at gmail.com>
 #    I added the t()
 t(as.data.frame(lapply(mylist, `[`,
 1:max(unlist(lapply(mylist,
  length))))))


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