What's the difference between lapply and do.call?

Question

I\'m learning R recently and confused by two function: lapplyand do.call. It seems that they\'re just similar to map function in Lisp.

Answer 1

In most simple words:

1. lapply() applies a given function for each element in a list,so there will be several function calls.

2. do.call() applies a given function to the list as a whole,so there is only one function call.

The best way to learn is to play around with the function examples in the R documentation.