dim {base}

Dimensions of an Object

Description

Retrieve or set the dimension of an object.

Usage

dim(x)
dim(x) <- value

Arguments

x

an R object, for example a matrix, array or data frame.

value

for the default method, either NULL or a numeric vector, which is coerced to integer (by truncation).

Details

The functions dim and dim<- are internal generic primitive functions.

dim has a method for data.frames, which returns the lengths of the row.names attribute of x and of x (as the numbers of rows and columns respectively).

Value

For an array (and hence in particular, for a matrix) dim retrieves the dim attribute of the object. It is NULL or a vector of mode integer.

The replacement method changes the "dim" attribute (provided the new value is compatible) and removes any "dimnames" and "names" attributes.

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

See Also

ncol, nrow and dimnames.

Examples

x <- 1:12 ; dim(x) <- c(3,4)
x

# simple versions of nrow and ncol could be defined as follows
nrow0 <- function(x) dim(x)[1]
ncol0 <- function(x) dim(x)[2]