Sum Elements of a List in R - For

Question

I have a list (mylist) of 110 items.

length(mylist)

#[1] 110

The elements within the lists are descriptions. I'm trying sum the elements of the entire list (basically counting the words in each description).

This provides a total for the first element.

length(mylist[[1]]) 

#[1] 162

Instead of repeating that 110 times, what is the best way to sum all 110 elements? Would a for statement work? Thanks.

Answer 1

More generally, use lapply to apply a function to each element of a list:

lapply(list, length)

Answer 2

If you want to determine element (word) wise count of each component (description) in your list , use Reduce("+",mylist)