Recipe Objective

Problem: Iteration through a long list or vector using a for loop takes tremendous amount of time.

This problem is solved by using apply family of functions in R. This family of functions can be fed with many built-in functions to perform different tasks on the collection of objects such as list, vector, dataframe etc.

The family of apply functions are listed below:

1. apply()
2. lapply()
3. sapply()
4. tapply()

lapply() is a function that takes a vector,list or data frame as input and gives the output as list by appplying a certain operation on it.

This recipe demonstrates how to use the lapply() using a list as input

Step 1: Importing libraries and loading dataset

We create a list and a vector of multiples of 4

Step 2: Using lapply()

Using the lapply() wuth the following syntax:

lapply(X, FUN)

where:

1. X = list or vector ;
2. FUN = function that needs to be applied on every element of list or vector

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NOTE: You can see the that the output of both is a list