How do I get 10^4 to become 10000?

|> For an individual value you can use:
|> 
|> > eval(parse(text = "10 ^ 5"))
|> [1] 1e+05
|> 
|> 
|> However, that simple approach does not work with a vector, since the
|> 'text' argument is treated as if it were single lines in an input
|> file.  Thus you need to do something like this to loop through the
|> vector elements:
|> 
|> # create the character vector
|> cv <- c("10 ^ 5", "10 ^ 4", "10 ^ 8")
|> 
|> # function to convert char vector elements to numeric
|> convtext <- function(x) eval(parse(text = x))
|> 
|> # use sapply to convert the vector
|> sapply(cv, convtext, USE.NAMES = FALSE)
|> [1] 1e+05 1e+04 1e+08

That's precisely what I needed to know.  Thanks

Thanks also to Tony Plate, Ray Brownrigg, and Robin Hankin for
reminding me of the 'text' argument to parse().

best

Patrick Connolly
HortResearch
Mt Albert
Auckland
New Zealand 
Ph: +64-9 815 4200 x 7188
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