In R, evaluate expressions within vector of strings

Question

I wish to evaluate a vector of strings containing arithmetic expressions -- \"1+2\", \"5*6\", etc.

I know that I can parse a single string into an expression and t

Answer 1

Just to show that you can also do this with a for loop:

result <- numeric(length(foo))
foo <- parse(text=foo)
for(i in seq_along(foo))
    result[i] <- eval(foo[[i]])

I'm not a fan of using the *apply functions for their own sake, but in this case, sapply really does lead to simpler, clearer code.

Answer 2

Just apply the whole function.

sapply(foo, function(x) eval(parse(text=x)))