cbind specific columns in list (without dplyr package)

Question

I have a list with approximately 50 (slots) - dataframes. Each and every element of this list (dataframe) has 10 columns, 3 of which correspond to "year", "month" and "day". How can I cbind those three columns into one (by creating new column), in every dataframe of this list, and convert them at the same time to as.Date format without using the dplyr package .

I'm sending a reproducible example:

city_A <- data.frame(year = c(1995,1996,1997),month = c(5,6,9),day = c(1,5,8),ozone = c(0.5,0.9,0.12))
city_D <- data.frame(year = c(1982,1959,1909),month = c(3,10,12),day = c(21,24,30),ozone = c(1.5,2.9,3.14))

town_list <- list(city_A,city_D)

The expected outcome is something like this:

[[1]]
  date              year   month day  ozone
1 1995-05-01        1995     5     1    0.5
2 1996-06-05        1996     6     5    0.9
3 1997-09-08        1997     9     8    0.12

[[2]]
  date              year   month day  ozone
1 1982-03-21        1982     3    21    1.5
2 1959-10-24        1959    10    24    2.9
3 1909-12-30        1909    12    30    3.14

Answer 1

Use do.call(rbind, x)

city_A <- data.frame(year = c(1995,1996,1997),month = c(5,6,9),day = c(1,5,8),ozone = c(0.5,0.9,0.12))
city_D <- data.frame(year = c(1982,1959,1909),month = c(3,10,12),day = c(21,24,30),ozone = c(1.5,2.9,3.14))

town_list <- list(city_A,city_D)

do.call(rbind, town_list)
#>   year month day ozone
#> 1 1995     5   1  0.50
#> 2 1996     6   5  0.90
#> 3 1997     9   8  0.12
#> 4 1982     3  21  1.50
#> 5 1959    10  24  2.90
#> 6 1909    12  30  3.14

^{Created on 2022-02-03 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}