Replacing in list inside list in R

Question

I have a list of lists like the following:

x <- list(x = list(a = 1:10, b = 10:20), y = 4, z = list(a = 1, b = 2))

str(x)

List of 3
 $ x:List of 2
  ..$ a: int [1:10] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
  ..$ b: int [1:11] 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 ...
 $ y: num 4
 $ z:List of 2
  ..$ a: num 1
  ..$ b: num 2

How can I replace values in the list "a" inside list "x" (x$a) to replace for example the 1 with 100.

My real data is very large so I cannot do it one by one and the unlist function is not a solution for me because I miss information.

Any ideas??

Answer 1

Here is trick using relist + unlist

> v <- unlist(x)

> relist(replace(v, grepl("\\.a\\d?", names(v)) & v == 1, 100), x)
$x
$x$a
 [1] 100   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10

$x$b
 [1] 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20


$y
[1] 4

$z
$z$a
[1] 100

$z$b
[1] 2