I have a list of suffixes I want to turn into file names with extensions. suff<- c("C1", "C2", "C3") paste("filename_", suff[[1]], ".ext", sep="") [1] "filename_C1.ext" How do I use lapply() on that call to paste()? What's the right way to do this: filenames <- lapply(suff, paste, ...) ? Can I have lapply() reorder the arguments to FUN?