Rename multiple lists items in for loop

I have multiple list with the same amount of items. I want to rename all lists items in loop. For example from lists items names "a, b, c", I want to rename them to "first, second, third":

#create 3 lists with items names a, b, c
list1 <- list(a=c(1:10), b=c(1:5), c=c(1:3))
list2 <- list(a="a", b="b", c="c")
list3 <- list(a=runif(4), b=runif(2), c=runif(4))


# wanted names of list items 
names <- c("first", "second", "third")

new_list <- list()

for (i in 1:3){
  for(j in seq_along(names)) {
    n <- paste0(names[[j]])
    new_list[[n]] <-  assign(paste0("list_", i), get(paste0("list", i)))
  }
}

But the result rename only third list.. How should I rename all lists items at once?

Solution

We can use lapply() and setNames():

lapply(list(list1, list2, list3), \(x) setNames(x, names))
#> [[1]]
#> [[1]]$first
#>  [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10
#> 
#> [[1]]$second
#> [1] 1 2 3 4 5
#> 
#> [[1]]$third
#> [1] 1 2 3
#> 
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> [[2]]$first
#> [1] "a"
#> 
#> [[2]]$second
#> [1] "b"
#> 
#> [[2]]$third
#> [1] "c"
#> 
#> 
#> [[3]]
#> [[3]]$first
#> [1] 0.7475211 0.9317233 0.1603680 0.7952381
#> 
#> [[3]]$second
#> [1] 0.5450439 0.8351545
#> 
#> [[3]]$third
#> [1] 0.1782355 0.9909339 0.2366660 0.7104271

^{Created on 2023-03-07 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

Data from OP

list1 <- list(a=c(1:10), b=c(1:5), c=c(1:3))
list2 <- list(a="a", b="b", c="c")
list3 <- list(a=runif(4), b=runif(2), c=runif(4))

names <- c("first", "second", "third")

We could also use a for loop with setNames)():

new_list <- list()

for (i in 1:3){
    new_list[[i]] <-  setNames(get(paste0("list", i)), names)
}

^{Created on 2023-03-07 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}