How to perform arithmetic on values and operators expressed as strings?

Question

I have a character variable with ratios (proportions) expressed as strings:

x <- c(\"2/3\", \"5/6\", \"3/11\").

I want to conver

Answer 1

tidyerse

If you stumbled onto this post in search of a tidyverse answer here is a simple extension. Note this does use the aforementioned "frowned upon" eval( parse())

library(dplyr)
library(purrr)

# add into a tibble
df <- tibble(fractions = c("2/3", "5/6", "3/11"))
df %>% 
  mutate(numbers = map_dbl(fractions, ~eval(parse(text = .x))))
#> # A tibble: 3 x 2
#>   fractions numbers
#>          
#> 1 2/3         0.667
#> 2 5/6         0.833
#> 3 3/11        0.273