sapply question

[Eric yang <yang_eric9@yahoo.com>]

 

Dear members,

 

I have a rather simple problem which is consequence of me trying to make my programming more efficient. Suppose, for examlpe, I want to produce this

 

[1] "A is letter"       "B is letter"       "C is letter"       "D is letter"     
[5] "E the last letter"

I can write the following:

 

 x <- LETTERS[1:5]

sapply(seq(along=x), function(count, my.letter) paste(my.letter[count], if(count<5) " is" else " the last"," letter" , sep=""), x)

 

Is it possible to write this without specifying two variables in the function call, e.g. can I do the above using

 

sapply(x, function(my.letter), paste(my.letter, ...

 

but how do I do the "if" part of the paste statement.

 

Thanks in advance of any help.

 

Eric

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