Table of Contents
Brace yourself my R coding friend. In this epic quest, I‘ll be your wisened apply() wizard guiding you through the curtain of confusion onto looping enlightenment!
Grab your walking stick because we have verbose valleys to traverse before reaching vectorized paradise…
Act I: Arrays Overdosed on apply()
Our journey begins with the aptly named apply(), the OG gangster of applies…
// Wizard casts area-wide magic spell
apply(data, 2, mean) With a flick of his wand, arrays and matrices bow before his will, statisticizing themselves cell-by-cell through the portal of the unnamed "margin" dimension.
But magic has costs. Behind the scenes, dark forces conjure iteration upon iteration, abstraction upon abstraction. Can mere mortal debug this witchcraft?
Pops out of a cave wearing for-loop tshirt
Beware naive coder! When apply() chants run too long, madness awaits. Explicit loops may yet prevail on quests with simple desires!
Wizard strokes beard thoughtfully
A wise warning my Amish friend. Not all spells suit all kingdoms…
Act II: The List Lord lapply()
As we traverse the Misty Marsh of Messy Lists, we cry out for an apply leader to transform these unruly hacker bands into orderly regiments.
Fanfare as lapply() descends from mountain top
Fear not weary trailblazers! With map and filter spells adopted from ancient JavaScript lore, lapply() shall parse documents, scrape pages and normalize columns.
No binding too complex for my recursion arts!
A herald appears
Lord of Lists! Functionagers approach from Schema Schema Land requesting a vector diplomacy. They find your output… inconsistantly shaped.
lapply() pans to sapply() smiling in the audience
My brother from another mother! Perhaps we shall broker an accord?
Act III: Sapply‘s Schema Siege
And so lapply() hosted the grand list gala in Attempt lo Abbaye, bringing together motley clans of objects under one roof.
Noble yet nervous, sapply() had one request:
"Dear lists, yield not just any output, but a uniform vector my people can parse!".
The brother wisely foresaw this accord would ease relations across messy divides.
And that my friends, is how the apply family learned to live listfully ever after!
Bows as crowd goes wild with applause