r - Looping arithmetic calculation between tables -

i have table this:

table1              not visible visible <na>           0.29       0.50   0.20 bowtie        0.24       0.17   0.59 cola          0.15       0.83   0.02 squig         0.49       0.51   0.49 

i have 9 other similar tables. below example:

 table2            not visible visible <na>           0.28    0.50    0.23 bowtie        0.11    0.30    0.59 cola          0.30    0.67    0.03 squig         0.42    0.51    0.06 

i want result of table1 - table2 below want table 1 each of other 9 tables.

       not visible  visible  <na>           0.01    0.00 -0.03 bowtie        0.13   -0.13  0.00 cola         -0.15    0.16 -0.01 squig         0.07    0.00  0.43 

how do without writing table 1 - table 2; table 1 - table 3; table 1 - table 4 etc? if try looping code below (as example), non-numeric argument binary error:

tables <- c("table1", "table2") ## example  (r in tables) {  yy <- paste(r,"res", sep = "-")   zz <- table1-r   assign(yy,zz)  } 

any ideas?

consider using list of tables (not string literals of names) , use lapply() resulting list can saved individual tables or binded dataframe:

# list of tables named elements (t1 not included) tables <- setnames(list(t2, t3, t4, t5, t6, t7, t8, t9),                     c("table2", "table3", "table4", "table5",                      "table6", "table7", "table8", "table9"))  # iteratively subtract t1 tablelist <- lapply(tables, function(x) t1 - x)  # save each table separate objects  list2env(tablelist, envir=.globalenv)  # dataframe binding - wide format (including t1) df <- as.data.frame(cbind(t1, do.call(cbind, tablelist)))  # dataframe binding - long format (including t1) df <- as.data.frame(rbind(t1, do.call(rbind, tablelist)))