Convert to numeric string with colons and commas in R [duplicate]

Answer 1

unlist(lapply(unlist(strsplit(a, ",")), function(x) eval(parse(text = x))))
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And here'a another approach in base R that does not use eval(parse())

unlist(lapply(strsplit(x = a, split = ","), function(x){
    unlist(lapply(strsplit(x = x, split = ":"), function(y)
        as.numeric(y[1]):as.numeric(y[2])))
}))
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