Applying gsub to various columns

Question

What is the most efficient way to apply gsub to various columns? The following does not work

x1=c(\"10%\",\"20%\",\"30%\")
x2=c(\"60%\",\"50%\",         


        

Answer 1

To clean the % out you can do:

x[per_col] <- lapply(x[per_col], function(y) as.numeric(gsub("%", "", y)))

x
  x1 x2 x3
1 10 60  1
2 20 50  2
3 30 40  3