Lappy with while function

Question

I have a list of datasets, I need to change the variable names. Some characters (i.e. ".") are repeated. I want to get rid of them neatly combining a while loop and an aptly created function.

Both the function I wrote and the last line of code do not work. Any help welcome!

Minimal working example:

x <- data.frame("WRONG...." = "", "NOT.SO.WRONG." = "", "NOT.WRONG" = "")
myfiles <- list(x)


nopoints <- function(x){
  while (any(grepl('\\.\\.', names(x)))){
    setNames(x, sub('\\.\\.', '\\.', names(x)))}
  return(x)}

myfiles2 <- lapply(myfiles, nopoints)

myfile2 <- lapply(myfiles2, function(x) setNames(x, sub('\\.$', '', names(x))))

Desired result:

myfiles2 <- data.frame("WRONG" = "", "NOT.SO.WRONG" = "", "NOT.WRONG" = "")

Answer 1

Ok. The function was missing a key element

nopoints <- function(x)
  {
  while (any(grepl('\\.\\.', names(x))))
    {
    x <- setNames(x, sub('\\.\\.', '\\.', names(x)))
  }
  return(x)
}

The second lapply call actually work as well on the example, it did not on my real list because of order of execution.