separate_rows applied to a list of dataframes R

Question

I would like to use the tiyverse separate_rows function to separate rows where >1 numerical values are in the same row. I can do it on a dataframe, but not a list of dataframes, and I don't understand why. All dataframes in the list have the same column names, just different number of rows.

a<-c("a","b","c")
b<-c(1,"1,2",3)
df1<-data.frame(a,b)
df2<-df1
df2[2,2]="1"

I can use separate_rows on df1

separate_rows(df1,b)
> separate_rows(df1,b)
  a b
1 a 1
2 b 1
3 b 2
4 c 3

But not on a list:

mylist<-list(df1,df2)
lapply(mylist, function(x) separate_rows(b))

Because I get an error

> lapply(mylist, function(x) separate_rows(b))
Error in UseMethod("separate_rows_") : 
  no applicable method for 'separate_rows_' applied to an object of class "character"
Called from: separate_rows_(data, cols = cols, sep = sep)

What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: I know what I was doing wrong (not passing all the arguments)

Answer 1

You need to pass the df as well

lapply(mylist, function(x) separate_rows(x,b))

Here is a simple non-elegant solution but it works

lapply(mylist, function(x) {y <- separate_rows(x,b)
                            y['b'] <- as.numeric(y[['b']])
                            y}) %>% str()