Skip to content

Apply

Status: Stable

documented, exercised by the test suite and/or worked examples, with no known limitations recorded.

Description

f @@ expr or Apply[f, expr]
    replaces the head of expr with f.
Apply[f, expr, levelspec]
    performs the head replacement at the parts of expr specified by
    levelspec; the default levelspec is {0} (top level only).

Examples

No verified examples yet for this function.

Implementation notes

Algorithm. builtin_apply replaces the head of expr with f at the levels given by an optional level-spec (default level 0, i.e. just the top head). The work is done by the recursive apply_at_level, which descends each EXPR_FUNCTION. A node is "at" the active range when its current depth lies in [spec.min, spec.max], with negative levels measured against get_depth(expr) (so -1 etc. count from the leaves). When a node is in range its arguments are first transformed recursively, a fresh f[args...] is built, and evaluate() is called on it so f's attributes take effect; otherwise the original head is kept (or transformed too when Heads -> True).

Level / option parsing. The third argument is interpreted by parse_level_spec (handles an integer n, {n}, {m,n}, Infinity, and treats Automatic/missing as level {0,0}); any trailing Heads -> True option is read by parse_options. A Rule-headed third argument is recognised as an option, not a level-spec.

Data structures. Operates directly on the Expr tagged union; rebuilds EXPR_FUNCTION nodes with expr_new_function. Leaves (non-function atoms) are returned via expr_copy unchanged.

Attributes: Protected.

Implementation status

Stable — documented, exercised by the test suite and/or worked examples, with no known limitations recorded.

References

Notes & additional examples

Worked examples

In[1]:= Apply[Plus, {1, 2, 3, 4}]
Out[1]= 10

In[1]:= f @@ {a, b, c}
Out[1]= f[a, b, c]

In[1]:= Apply[List, a + b + c]
Out[1]= {a, b, c}

In[1]:= Apply[f, {{a, b}, {c, d}}, {1}]
Out[1]= {f[a, b], f[c, d]}

In[1]:= Apply[Times, Range[10]]
Out[1]= 3628800

In[1]:= Apply[GCD, {84, 126, 210}]
Out[1]= 42

In[2]:= Apply[Plus, Table[1/k^2, {k, 1, 6}]]
Out[2]= 5369/3600

Notes

f @@ expr is the shorthand for Apply[f, expr]: it replaces the head of expr with f. Apply[Plus, list] is the standard idiom for summing a list, since the list's List head is swapped for Plus. Because addition is stored as Plus[...], Apply[List, a + b + c] recovers the summands. A level specification like {1} applies the head replacement to each element at that level instead of the whole expression. Folding a variadic head over a generated list is a common pattern: Apply[Times, Range[10]] is 10!, Apply[GCD, ...] collapses a list to a single greatest common divisor, and Apply[Plus, ...] over exact rationals returns the exact partial sum 5369/3600.