How do I make a matrix from a list of vectors in R?

r matrix vector

Goal: from a list of vectors of equal length, create a matrix where each vector becomes a row.

Example:

> a <- list()
> for (i in 1:10) a[[i]] <- c(i,1:5)
> a
[[1]]
[1] 1 1 2 3 4 5

[[2]]
[1] 2 1 2 3 4 5

[[3]]
[1] 3 1 2 3 4 5

[[4]]
[1] 4 1 2 3 4 5

[[5]]
[1] 5 1 2 3 4 5

[[6]]
[1] 6 1 2 3 4 5

[[7]]
[1] 7 1 2 3 4 5

[[8]]
[1] 8 1 2 3 4 5

[[9]]
[1] 9 1 2 3 4 5

[[10]]
[1] 10  1  2  3  4  5

I want:

      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6]
 [1,]    1    1    2    3    4    5
 [2,]    2    1    2    3    4    5
 [3,]    3    1    2    3    4    5
 [4,]    4    1    2    3    4    5
 [5,]    5    1    2    3    4    5
 [6,]    6    1    2    3    4    5
 [7,]    7    1    2    3    4    5
 [8,]    8    1    2    3    4    5
 [9,]    9    1    2    3    4    5
[10,]   10    1    2    3    4    5

Christopher DuBois

One option is to use do.call():

 > do.call(rbind, a)
      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6]
 [1,]    1    1    2    3    4    5
 [2,]    2    1    2    3    4    5
 [3,]    3    1    2    3    4    5
 [4,]    4    1    2    3    4    5
 [5,]    5    1    2    3    4    5
 [6,]    6    1    2    3    4    5
 [7,]    7    1    2    3    4    5
 [8,]    8    1    2    3    4    5
 [9,]    9    1    2    3    4    5
[10,]   10    1    2    3    4    5

So the difference between this and the standard rbind() is that do.call() passes each list item as a separate arg - is that right? do.call(rbind,a) is equivalent to rbind(a[[1]], a[[2]]... a[[10]])?

do.call() is great for this purpose, I wish it were better "documented" in the introductory materials.

Kalin

simplify2array is a base function that is fairly intuitive. However, since R's default is to fill in data by columns first, you will need to transpose the output. (sapply uses simplify2array, as documented in help(sapply).)

> t(simplify2array(a))
      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6]
 [1,]    1    1    2    3    4    5
 [2,]    2    1    2    3    4    5
 [3,]    3    1    2    3    4    5
 [4,]    4    1    2    3    4    5
 [5,]    5    1    2    3    4    5
 [6,]    6    1    2    3    4    5
 [7,]    7    1    2    3    4    5
 [8,]    8    1    2    3    4    5
 [9,]    9    1    2    3    4    5
[10,]   10    1    2    3    4    5

Kalin

The built-in matrix function has the nice option to enter data byrow. Combine that with an unlist on your source list will give you a matrix. We also need to specify the number of rows so it can break up the unlisted data. That is:

> matrix(unlist(a), byrow=TRUE, nrow=length(a) )
      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6]
 [1,]    1    1    2    3    4    5
 [2,]    2    1    2    3    4    5
 [3,]    3    1    2    3    4    5
 [4,]    4    1    2    3    4    5
 [5,]    5    1    2    3    4    5
 [6,]    6    1    2    3    4    5
 [7,]    7    1    2    3    4    5
 [8,]    8    1    2    3    4    5
 [9,]    9    1    2    3    4    5
[10,]   10    1    2    3    4    5

Or fill a matrix by columns and then transpose: t( matrix( unlist(a), ncol=length(a) ) ).

Paolo

Not straightforward, but it works:

> t(sapply(a, unlist))
      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6]
 [1,]    1    1    2    3    4    5
 [2,]    2    1    2    3    4    5
 [3,]    3    1    2    3    4    5
 [4,]    4    1    2    3    4    5
 [5,]    5    1    2    3    4    5
 [6,]    6    1    2    3    4    5
 [7,]    7    1    2    3    4    5
 [8,]    8    1    2    3    4    5
 [9,]    9    1    2    3    4    5
[10,]   10    1    2    3    4    5

With rjson results, colMeans works only for this method! Thank you!

Arihant

t(sapply(a, '[', 1:max(sapply(a, length))))

where 'a' is a list. Would work for unequal row size

learnr

> library(plyr)
> as.matrix(ldply(a))
      V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6
 [1,]  1  1  2  3  4  5
 [2,]  2  1  2  3  4  5
 [3,]  3  1  2  3  4  5
 [4,]  4  1  2  3  4  5
 [5,]  5  1  2  3  4  5
 [6,]  6  1  2  3  4  5
 [7,]  7  1  2  3  4  5
 [8,]  8  1  2  3  4  5
 [9,]  9  1  2  3  4  5
[10,] 10  1  2  3  4  5

This will simply not work if the rows don't have the same length, while do.call(rbind,...) still works.

any clues how to make it work for unequal row size with NA for the missing row data?

@rwst Actually, do.call(rbind,...) does not work for unequal-length vectors, unless you really intend to have the vector reused when filling in the row at the end. See Arihant's response for a way that fills in with NA values at the end instead.

How do I make a matrix from a list of vectors in R?

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