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Can you pass a vector to a vararg?: Vector to sprintf

Tags:

r

printf

vector

Let's say I have a function that takes variable arguments, such as sprintf(). I want something like:

sprintf("%s %s", "a", "b")

but I have "a" and "b" in a vector c("a", "b"). A call such as

sprintf("%s %s", c("a", "b"))

will produce an error for not enough arguments. Many languages provide a way to "flatten" a vector into a variable-length argument. But I cannot seem to find the syntax for doing so in R. Is there a way?

like image 736
Ara Vartanian Avatar asked Sep 10 '11 00:09

Ara Vartanian


1 Answers

You can use do.call:

vec <- c("a","b")
do.call(sprintf, c(list("%s %s"), vec))
# [1] "a b"
like image 195
Joshua Ulrich Avatar answered Sep 20 '22 23:09

Joshua Ulrich