creating named elements of lists on the fly

lst <- list()
element <- "a"
lst[[element]] <- 1:5
element <- "b"
lst[[element]] <- letters[1:5]
lst

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Ben Shapiro
Sent: Friday, October 08, 2004 11:46 AM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] creating named elements of lists on the fly 

HI Folks,

I'm trying to create a list with named elements. Only, I 
don't know the names of the elements a priori (they come from 
the data being calculated). Currently, my approach is to 
create an environment, then assign things to the 
environement, then as.list the environment to get a list. 

Running the code gives, for example:

e2 <- new.env(FALSE, NULL)
assign("dude", 123, env=e2)
assign("chick", 456, env=e2)
as.list(e2)

Error in as.vector(x, "list") : cannot coerce to vector

Is this the best way to make a list like this? 

Thanks,
Ben