How to loop a strplit over multiple columns in R

Question

I have an assignment for stat computing, and now I get stuck on something you all probably think pretty easy, I won't ask you to solve the whole thing for me, however this is the problem:

I have a data frame with multiple columns I need to slip these columns into two I know how to slipt one column, in this case column three:

strsplit((my_data[,3]), split = " ")

however if I try to do this over al the column I need this for:

strsplit((my_data[,3:14]), split = " ")

I get this error: Error in strsplit((my_data[, 3:14]), split = " ") : non-character argument

So I understand I probably need a loop, however I don't know how to do this, this is what I tried:

test <- for(i in 3:ncol(my_data)){
  strsplit((my_data[i]), split = " ")
}

but yeah that doesn't work

enter code here

Answer 1

You can use apply for this job:

my_data_split = apply(my_data, 2, function(x) strsplit(x, split = " "))

This will store the results in a list. If you would like to store the results in another data type you could use one of the other apply functions.

Good luck!