I have FACS data in a CSV format, when I attempt to transform it with flowCore::transform it returns exactly the same data.frame/matrix with no warnings nor errors.

This is the example in the help page of arcsinhTransform:

samp <- read.FCS(system.file("extdata",
        "0877408774.B08", package="flowCore"))
asinhTrans <- arcsinhTransform(transformationId="ln-transformation", a=1, b=1, c=1)
translist <- transformList('FSC-H', asinhTrans)
dataTransform <- transform(samp, translist)

We can see it works, at least the column FSC-H changes:

head(samp,2)
#     FSC-H SSC-H      FL1-H    FL2-H     FL3-H FL1-A    FL4-H Time
#[1,]   382    77 259.455272  1.00000  7.566695    55 13.09747    1
#[2,]   628   280   9.057978 48.26071 10.273508     0 28.13318    1

head(dataTransform,2)
#        FSC-H SSC-H      FL1-H    FL2-H     FL3-H FL1-A    FL4-H Time
#[1,] 7.641184    77 259.455272  1.00000  7.566695    55 13.09747    1
#[2,] 8.137279   280   9.057978 48.26071 10.273508     0 28.13318    1

However when I extract the table from the flowFrame the transformation makes no effect. I tried also logicleTransform and I'm looking for a solution that would work for any tranform function.

samp.df <- exprs(samp)
dataTransform.df <- transform(samp.df, translist)

head(samp.df,2)
#     FSC-H SSC-H      FL1-H    FL2-H     FL3-H FL1-A    FL4-H Time
#[1,]   382    77 259.455272  1.00000  7.566695    55 13.09747    1
#[2,]   628   280   9.057978 48.26071 10.273508     0 28.13318    1
 head(dataTransform.df,2)
#  FSC.H SSC.H      FL1.H    FL2.H     FL3.H FL1.A    FL4.H Time
#1   382    77 259.455272  1.00000  7.566695    55 13.09747    1
#2   628   280   9.057978 48.26071 10.273508     0 28.13318    1

If my data looks like samp.df, what is the best/fastest way to transform it?

I tried also translist <- transformList('FSC.H', asinhTrans) because of the column names conversion in data.frames

'Transform' method in flowCore is defined for 'flowFrame` or `flowSet`. So you want to convert your 'data.frame' into `flow object` first.

Here are convenient wrappers (currently not exported) you can use to load csv into `flowFrame` or `flowSet`

openCyto:::.read.FCS.csv

openCyto:::.read.flowSet.csv