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

We can unlist per_col columns, remove "%" symbol and convert it into numeric.

x[per_col] <- as.numeric(gsub("%","", unlist(x[per_col])))
#In this case using sub would be enough too as we have only 1 % symbol to replace
#x[per_col] <- as.numeric(sub("%","", unlist(x[per_col])))

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