Question

I have a function f(var1, var2) in R. Suppose we set var2 = 1 and now I want to apply the function f() to the list L. Basically I want to get a new list L* with the outputs

[f(L[1],1),f(L[2],1),...,f(L[n],1)]

How do I do this with either apply, mapply or lapply?

Answer 1

Just pass var2 as an extra argument to one of the apply functions.

mylist <- list(a=1,b=2,c=3)
myfxn <- function(var1,var2){
  var1*var2
}
var2 <- 2

sapply(mylist,myfxn,var2=var2)

This passes the same var2 to every call of myfxn. If instead you want each call of myfxn to get the 1st/2nd/3rd/etc. element of both mylist and var2, then you’re in mapply‘s domain.