[R] assigning values to elements of matrixes

[PIKAL Petr]

Hi Matteo

From assign help page

x
a variable name, given as a character string. No coercion is done, and the first element of a character vector of length greater than one will be used, with a warning

Nothing is said about matrices and dimensions here so I wouldn't expect that assign can operate the way you are expecting.

However I am not sure how to do what you want. It has probably something to do with environments which is not my cup of tea. I would do it list way. Here is an example>

Named list with 2 matrices

> lll<-list(mat_a=mat_a, mat_b=mat_b)
> lll
$mat_a
     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
[1,]    0    0    0    0    0
[2,]    0    0    0    0    0
[3,]    0    0    0    0    0
[4,]    0    0    0    0    0
[5,]    0    0    0    0    0

$mat_b
     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
[1,]    0    0    0    0    0
[2,]    0    0    0    0    0
[3,]    0    0    0    0    0
[4,]    0    0    0    0    0
[5,]    0    0    0    0    0

Name of a matrix
> nam
[1] "mat_a"

Selection of appropriate matrix element and assigning it a value

> lll[[which(names(lll)==nam)]][2,2]<-10

Changed list
> lll
$mat_a
     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
[1,]    0    0    0    0    0
[2,]    0   10    0    0    0
[3,]    0    0    0    0    0
[4,]    0    0    0    0    0
[5,]    0    0    0    0    0

$mat_b
     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
[1,]    0    0    0    0    0
[2,]    0    0    0    0    0
[3,]    0    0    0    0    0
[4,]    0    0    0    0    0
[5,]    0    0    0    0    0

You can easily put everything in a function similar to yours without using assign.

Cheers
Petr


> -----Original Message-----
> From: R-help [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Matteo
> Richiardi
> Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2015 9:45 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] assigning values to elements of matrixes
>
> I am following the example I find on ?assign:
>
> a <- 1:4
> assign("a[1]", 2)
>
> This appears to create a new variable named "a[1]" rather than changing
> the value of the vector.
>
> Am I missing something here? How can I assign a value to a specified
> element of a vector/matrix?
>
> Of course, my problem is slightly more involved, but I guess the above
> is its core. For those interested, I have the two matrixes M_a <-
> matrix(0,10,10) M_b <- matrix(0,10,10)
>
> I want to have a function that assigns a value to a specific element of
> one of the matrix, as in foo <- function(s,i,j,value){
>   assign(paste("M_",s)[i,j],value)
> }
>
> This however does not work:
>
> foo('a',1,1,1)
>
> Error in paste("M_", s)[1, j] : incorrect number of dimensions
>
> Following the ?assign help, I tried
>
> foo2 <- function(s,i,j,value){
>   assign(paste("M_",s,"[i,j]"),value, envir = .GlobalEnv) }
>
> but this produces the problem I described above (namely, a new variable
> is created, rather than replacing the specified element of the matrix).
>
> I know that in this example I could simply pass the matrix as an
> argument to the function, but I am interested in understanding how
> 'assign' work.
>
> Many thanks for your help.
>
> Matteo
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

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