How to apply specific columns to sapply function in R?

Question

For example:

sapply(cars[2:3], FUN = IQR)

But how about if I wanted index 2 and 5? Also instead of indexes is there any way to use the column names instead?

Does this answer your question? [R Apply() function on specific dataframe columns](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18503177/r-apply-function-on-specific-dataframe-columns) — camille, Feb 08 '20 at 18:43
Also dplyr examples [here](https://stackoverflow.com/q/21644848/5325862) (`summarise_at`), a few [here](https://stackoverflow.com/q/21295936/5325862) and [here](https://stackoverflow.com/q/43620936/5325862) that should help — camille, Feb 08 '20 at 18:52

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 08 '20 at 18:25

1

We can use anonymous function

sapply(names(cars)[1:2], function(x) IQR(cars[[x]]))

If we wanted columns 2 and 5, use c instead of seq operator (using a different dataset as cars have only two columns)

sapply(mtcars[c(2, 5)], IQR)
#   cyl drat  
# 4.00 0.84

answered Feb 08 '20 at 18:25

akrun

If we pass a vector for example with 2, 5, can we also use the column names? – Angel Cloudwalker Feb 08 '20 at 18:27
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@MilesMorales Either you can use numeric index or names. It doesn't make sense to subset the names with a numeric index and then get the columns. i.e. `v1 – akrun Feb 08 '20 at 18:29
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I confirmed this works! sapply(cars[c("price","passengers")], FUN = IQR), appreciate the help! – Angel Cloudwalker Feb 08 '20 at 18:31
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Will do! It's just stack overflow makes you wait a few minutes before allowing an answer. Thanks for the speedy resolution! – Angel Cloudwalker Feb 08 '20 at 18:46

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